Drive, a 2011 film starring Ryan Gosling as Driver, has left people thinking deeply about why it’s named that, and whether it actually has a double meaning.
One Redditor thought they’d cracked it when they took to the ‘True Film’ forum for a discussion about what other people thought about the movie, saying they thought it had a lot of “symbolism.”
They penned: “I have always felt that Drive was an underrated film, but that’s just my personal opinion. I re watched it recently and I have noticed some very interesting aspect to the film’s narrative, and hopefully you can share some of your own that you have found.
“Firstly, the main character is never called by name in the entire movie. He is just The Driver. Now, this is fairly obvious if you’ve seen the film, but this goes deeper.
“The Driver never tells anyone his name so that he can’t feel guilt for his actions. It’s not him that did it, it’s what he projects himself onto, The Driver, that did it. I found this very interesting, and it also plays into my next point (nice segue), contrast.
“Throughout the film, the mood was a bit uncanny valley. If you don’t understand what that is, please Google it, it’s hard to explain really.
“The Driver on the outside looks like a sweet, kind man who is just doubling as a wheelman to make some money.
“However, it’s obvious that he is brawling with inner demons, and when ‘they’ come out, it makes for an incredible film, even if it is hyper-violent. This really blends the concepts of good and bad and warps our perception of The Driver.”
In the comments, someone wrote: “I think the Driver is like any other human beings, though whatever the mystery is that painted him darker and into his introverted ways we dont know. Cool stuff”.
Another said: “I also literally just finished this film. My main ‘problem’ with it was that for a movie called Drive…they didn’t exactly do a lot of driving. There is nothing wrong with that exactly, but I feel like a few really “cool” driving scenes would have really added to the movie.
“I think the film is a really great take on modern noir. I think the soundtrack is amazing. I really enjoyed the movie. But is it too much to ask for a little driving?
“I feel like action movies get a bad wrap for being “anti-intellectual”. I guess I just feel like they missed an opportunity to make a really great noir film into a cool action film. I truly believe that some more action would have improved the movie. Maybe that’s just me, though.”
According to What Culture, the movie’s name really does have a double meaning.
They write: “The title is fairly straightforward at first, as driving is a central motif of the story. With Gosling’s driver working as a getaway driver, it’s easy to imagine that he hears the command ‘drive!’ fairly often, too.
“The movie also examines a person’s drive; what compels them forward, why do they make the decisions they do, why do they make mistakes?”
They point out that “Gosling’s character wears a scorpion jacket throughout, in reference to the scorpion and the frog crossing the lake,” and the “scorpion stings the frog and they both die” because it’s in the scorpion’s “nature” to do that.
They said it’s “deliberately vague” whether Gosling’s character is the “scorpion here, stinging and self-sabotaging due to his own drive, or whether he’s the frog being marked by a scorpion, and is doomed to be stung”.