The two directors featured in this series, up to this point, have enjoyed a particular type of mainstream success. Both David Fincher and Rian Johnson have transitioned to premier Hollywood filmmaking, while losing very little of what makes them distinct as artists. Then, we have the case of Nicolas Winding Refn, the Danish provocateur who was so briefly the coolest filmmaker (he was even popular enough to be a dating red-flag director – now, that’s mainstream clout) in Hollywood only to be discarded back to niche circles after a series of flops that dared to bask in Refn’s own obsessions.
Best Film: Drive
I know – the ultra-violent, gorgeously soundtracked, impeccably acted, cultist of 2010s cult films is an unsurprisingly easy choice for Refn’s best film. Ryan Gosling’s stunt-man (no, not that one)/getaway driver’s journey from effortlessly cool automaton to effortlessly cool romantic hero is an easy film to love while also being an easy film to take the piss out of. It’s a quiet action romance that cares more about the moments between the bits that are usually in the trailers. This is the Hollywood action movie through Refn’s lens and it’s as beautiful as it is savage. And where the hell are Albert Brook’s eyebrows?
Drive is a marriage of his own idiosyncrasies: his world building, production design, music choice, as well as his obsession with the role of masculinity in a violent world. His Pusher films are basically this without the Hollywood sheen. Compare the protagonists of that trilogy with the characters of Drive and you see the fragility at the heart of their violence. This is how, in Refn’s cinematic worlds, men communicate – and for all of the coloured lights and cool synths, it’s not that glamorous.
Worst Film: Fear X
I love Only God Forgives. There, I said it. Red flag waved. Even though it killed Refn’s mainstream career, there are worse films in his career. Only God Forgives is polarizing, Valhalla Rising might be too harsh to be a real favourite, and The Neon Demon is immature to say the least, but the worst thing for a Refn film to be is boring. Enter Fear X.
On the face of it, Fear X is a revenge thriller without the revenge or the thrills. John Tuturro plays Harry Crane, a distraught and very angry man (the only direction Refn seems to give Tuturro is “angry”) who is investigating the death of his pregnant wife and sets his sights on a cop called Peter (James Remar, whose only direction from Refn was “more confused”). Written with Requiem for a Dream author, Hubert Selby Jr Fear X should be anything but boring. The best I can say about it is that it’s well lit, what Refn film isn’t, but it just feels like the dullest impression of David Lynch I can think of. What if: the first twenty minutes of Lost Highway, but boring?
Fear X is an outlier in both Refn and Selby Jr’s careers, a strange anomaly that is best forgotten like that Metallica and Lou Reed album or Ozzy Osborne and Miss Piggy.
Where do you stand on Winding Refn’s polarizing career? What are your favourites (and least favourites) from him? Let us know in the comments!
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By Kevin Boyle
(header image via Motion Picture Blog)
No But Listen 