Colour in 'Drive'

In one of the more gruesome scenes in Drive (2011), Driver (Ryan Gosling) stands in a motel room with blood aggressively streaked across his face. Throughout the early parts of the film, he’s predominantly painted in cool tints (subdued greens, blues and shades of grey). Here, though, his own actions have caused a grim and literal recolouring. He becomes emphatically warm and the visual change reveals shifting circumstances: at this point, he is so captivated by Irene (Carey Mulligan) that he is willing to engage more fully with the world of crime. Nicolas Winding Refn, the director, and Newton Thomas Sigel, the cinematographer, control colour expertly, using a fairly limited palette to enact in light the tensions that exist between characters and social worlds.

Despite the extensive use of red, white and blue, Refn is not concerned with American nationalism or issues of the flag. Instead, there’s a use of colour that enunciates personal emotions by playing with the split between warm and cool. In the beginning, as mentioned above, Driver’s face is washed almost exclusively with the latter. Gosling’s understated performance, which combines subtle gestures and few words, achieves a characterisation that is paralleled in light.

In contrast, Irene, coloured in warm reds, oranges and yellows, radiates care and maternal love.

Refn carefully arranges the frame during Driver’s and Irene’s early meetings so that tints of different temperatures remain quite firmly attached to each character.

But, as the attraction becomes greater, the breakdown of social barriers is paralleled in a blending of hues. The pair are first cast together in a warm glow in Driver’s car, though the effect quickly enters Irene’s domestic space.

Refn’s and Sigel’s use of colour is subtler, though, than simply revealing a movement from separation to unity. Throughout the picture, there’s a tension between gradation and delineation. A scene near the end brings this design into focus. Irene walks back to her apartment, having received no answer to her knock on Driver’s door. The walls are a rich brown and her face is a warm wooden orange. She passes a framed picture of the sea which is composed of blues and greens. The particular perspective of the painting echoes the framing of the ocean in an earlier scene in which Driver commits his ultimate act of violence (which, by the by, we’re not shown). So, then, this image that brings him to mind only reinforces that he has gone. The situation is summarised by the relationship between warm and cool tints (easily kept separate by a frame): the bloody mess that has stained Driver’s face and has escalated beyond control ultimately renders the pair like oil and water, rather than two drops in an ocean.

Edited from: atowninblackandwhite.com