Electric nights

Rating: Null/10 (27 September 2011)

I don't rate Refn as a particularly bright film mind, but he is film-literate and savvy enough to take from places that makes him look good, but that I also love to visit which ensures my interest in a new film by him. In Valhalla Rising the transcendent ritual was from Tarkovsky, Malick, Herzog only tweaked a little to be about non-transcendence; here the silence of a mock Zen, anonymous wandering is from Melville, of course The Driver, the electric nightscapes from Mann, Friedkin, the idea of man as this car orbiting outside the traveled life from Two-Lane Blacktop. The added appeal for me is the particular niche of a European filming, looking to unveil the American heart pumping blood across the world; usually centered in Los Angeles, the Mecca of ephemeral dreaming, we get Zabriskie Point, Chinatown, Paris Texas, etc.
So maybe Refn appropriates from where he would like to but cannot envision, or maybe recognizes a world whose axis he understands and therefore can transport to. Once again it's about man alone at the far precipice of civilization, here transferred in the middle of it, the neon heart of the big city.
It's fine as this journey through urban deserts but with space and silence simply elongated, so what else makes this worth seeing? A lot of viewers, and Refn seems to abet this by dressing him in a brooding demeanor, view this man as a soulless product of alienation - as much from the drifter genealogy of Le Samourai as from The Terminator and Anton Chigurh - which raises a single question; will this drifter out of orbit manage to ground himself where life is meaningful again, where he can be a name and a face.
But if we inverse our negative idea of emptiness, we have a man, as the Zen koan goes, as the sound of one hand clapping; so an emptiness expressed in form and silence, always possible in form, and revealed by the perfect discipline of that form, here impeccable driving.
So not a thought and not an ontology, but an awareness from which flows a life that is no longer fractured but whole, simply sentient; a man who is capable for both kindness and terrible vengeance - but not evil, and therefore not good - who has embodied what it means that the gate is a gateless barrier; and so passage is possible everywhere.
This requires we throw away the story about scorpions and frogs; but which Refn evidently expects us to interpret from. The man though of as the scorpion, but only because he wears the jacket - a costume, a face he can take off and wear at will, and so a false face - but who radiates an essential purity of heart that is plainly visible; the kid takes to him, the woman, even the rival. Life as this theater, a painterly arrest of ceremonial gestures - the man kissing the woman, shielding from horror, then when the dark face is revealed elevator doors sliding between them, the scorpion to the camera.
Ryan Gosling is exceptional, he understands the scorpion must be dancing around the eyes.
We are meant to understand that this is the true face, but we know better by then. This is actually the most powerful part of the film, the ritual with faces; this is where the great filmmakers would soar from. Refn doesn't know quite how, not yet. So instead of uniting vision with a search for the true face, whereby this man is neither scorpion nor frog, he gives us disparities to play with.
So I agree with others who say it's a confusing film to decipher; only the palm of a master hides nothing while meaning everything. Refn is still a filmmaker who revels at the sight of blood - brains splattering in glorious slow-motion is a horrible blunder on his part, this is stuff I expect from Tarantino. But he also has the ability to evoke moods that Tarantino simply can't.
It's not a very bright lesson, this effort to soothe us into accepting as inevitable the worst in us. How about in its place the first among koans, Zen Master Joshu's soul-deafening aphorism when asked if dogs have Buddha-nature. But then we would deviate too much and be doing Refn's work for him. Or alternatively, Refn showing wisdom, the film is about the spiritual struggle from the enlightened removal of the hermitage back into the waking world, of course greeted with anomy and violence. I doubt it but it'll be something to keep in mind upon a rewatch.
Still, Joshu's answer riddles this; "mu!", the Chinese character for "non", "nothing", "nonbeing".