While my mom was here my husband and I got to go to the movies (twice! by ourselves!). Moneyball was boring, although I could see how it got its good movie vibes: there was no cheap emotion, and all the scenes advanced the plot. It maybe could have used a little cheap emotion. But I digress.
Drive was haunting. Looking at its Wikipedia entry, I see that it was intended as a modern fairy tale. But what it really reminds me of is Homer's Iliad. Thinking about my novel, I've been trying to imagine marriage relationships in Homeric Greece. Drive recreated in a modern setting that vast divide between men's and women's lives that is especially characteristic of the Iliad.
The scene that epitomizes this, of course, is the elevator sequence, where the Driver kisses Irene for the first and last time, moments before he kills the third passenger in the elevator. He moves her aside, kisses her with his full attention, and then throws himself whole-heartedly into murdering the mob assassin riding the elevator with them.
Throughout the movie, there is emphasis on Irene's separation from the violence and killing. Albert Brooks tells the Driver that if he gives back the money, "the girl is off the map." The violence and killing itself resembles violent incidents in the Iliad: we are given enough background to feel pity, but at the same time the murders are carried out quite dispassionately.
I'm not saying that the movie 'alludes' to the Iliad. It seems to express some kind of man-woman drama similar to that which inspired Homer's poem.
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