ACCELERATED NON-PLACES

The threat of non-places and their association with violence is im-mediately made apparent. When Standard is attacked because he owes protection money from prison it happens in a parking garage.

The dim shadows make the entire parking garage threatening, turn-ing the garage into an any-space-whatever, undifferentiated urban tissue extending below the earth. What this assault reveals is that the fragmented spaces of Los Angeles remain open to connection at any moment; just as the any-space-whatever is deconnected in pure potentiality (waiting for connections to be made), so the rhizome of Los Angeles’ mosaic is pure violent potentiality: any place can im-mediately be turned into a threatening non-place.

The purest expression of violence as movement comes from the robbery and onwards. The robbery takes place in a strangely deserted strip mall, the sandy-colored concrete blending in perfect-ly with the desert and mountains beyond, turning this scene into the urban version of a Western movie’s bank robbery, the wealth no longer located in a bank but tellingly in a pawn shop where people have had to hawk their belongings, revealing a completely different distribution of wealth. The robbery itself takes place offscreen, stay-ing with Driver’s point of view and thereby retardstay-ing information that will later become significant. In an unexpectedly understated robbery, the helper Blanche carries a bag of money out and Stand-ard emerges from the pawn shop calmly. When StandStand-ard is shot it happens unexpectedly and almost undramatically. The adrenaline surge only kicks in when Driver races off the parking lot and the traditional car chase follows.

In the car chase, again unexpectedly, our point of view moves outside Driver’s car, a place we are never otherwise given access to in the rest of the film, where we are always located inside, looking up at Driver. Instead, in this scene our point of view is extremely

mobile, even more mobile than Driver, as we swerve around pass-ing cars, still placed low and lookpass-ing up. There are alternatpass-ing shots of Driver looking intensely in the rear view mirror and Blanche looking frightened, before we again move outside to a very vulner-able point of view, twirling along the road, facing Driver and so with our back to the onrushing traffic. Not being able to see what we hurtle towards is extremely unpleasant, causing an intense reaction to the car’s movement. In a magnificent car stunt, Driver spins his car and drives in reverse, in order to better see what the pursuing driver will do. This is the only time that we are placed in a relatively safe position of a medium, straight angle shot where we feel more as spectators to a car race, but it is a short respite before we are hurtled into a POV of the pursuing car hurling straight into us.

As suddenly as the car chase occurred, just as suddenly it is over and the image of the semi-flipped pursuing car dissolves into a shot of the money from the robbery. The contrast to the follow-ing motel scene is extreme. Movfollow-ing from high-paced editfollow-ing, bright exterior, low angle shots that constantly shift POVs and high am-plitude direct sound of car tires screeching to dark interior tracking shots, with a stable POV and a low, rumbling drone soundtrack, the contrast becomes viscerally arresting as we crash into a low-speed sequence. The action-image of the car chase becomes the dilating any-space-whatever of the motel room, with the characters reduced to silhouettes. Further frustrating our pent-up adrenaline is the slow-motion cinematography as Driver and Blanche are attacked.

Emphasizing the blurred cinematic space of the motel room, the attackers are announced only as shadows on Driver’s body and then slow-motion begins. Our desire to act, the need to move as quickly as in the previous scene is inhibited by the slow-motion im-ages and the shockingly disruptive slowing down of synchronous sound, which is practically unheard of in Hollywood’s continuity system, jolts our experience. As image speed reverts to normal, the impact of the violence hits us as Driver quickly and expertly finishes off the attackers. Slow-motion images return, our attention linger-ing on the bloody face of Driver.

The non-place of the motel, much like the parking garage be-fore it, becomes the site of extreme violence which the film does not shy away from presenting quite graphically to the viewer. Much as social structure breaks down in non-places, so narrative structure breaks down in these scenes of intense violence. These scenes are the more disturbing because they are so unexpected and sudden.

While we would expect moments of violence to erupt, the sudden-ness and extremity of the violence make the sequences stunning because they punctuate a film that has until now been relatively contemplative in pacing. The surge of speed fits less into a narrative arc than a general intensification of affect in the film. Safe places are threatened by bursts of violence, revealing that there are in fact no safe places, all places are open to turn into non-places with the introduction of violence.

The clearest example of a burst of violence turning a place into a non-place is the justly (in)famous elevator scene, which is the sec-ond affective core of the movie. The scene starts earlier with Driver picking up Irene and most of their dialog takes place in the hallway outside their apartments, a place that has previously been estab-lished as their romantic meeting place. As they enter the elevator, another man stands there and a whining drone ambient sound sig-nals the fact that this man carries a gun and is clearly there to kill Driver. Suddenly, slow-motion is introduced again and the light of the elevator changes in an expressive metaphor that turns this mo-ment into a slow, romantic any-space-whatever. The whining drone fades in favor of a far more romantic melody as Driver and Irene kiss longingly. The rest of the elevator goes dark and the two of them are flooded in saturated, warm light, which demarcates the closest the film comes to a romantic climax. We dwell in this little moment of passion and love, no longer in the action-image but in-stead an image of pure affect for a brief, ecstatic moment, before the whining drone comes back and the light shifts to the elevator light.

Abruptly shifting back into normal speed, Driver turns around and slams the attacker’s head into the wall of the elevator. What follows is another intense, violent action-image where our

senso-ry-motor schema are ambiguously aligned among Driver, the un-known assailant, and the shocked Irene. While most of the actual violence is offscreen, the sounds are visceral enough that there is no mistake as to what happens to the assailant, even with the brief reverse shot as the assailant’s head pops with a sickening sound and we see a mass of brain all over the elevator floor. The intensity of the violence and its sudden eruption reveals a side of Driver that Irene has not seen; his pathologically violent side which is nevertheless necessary to save her, if not their relationship.

Moving back into slow-motion, Irene backs out of the eleva-tor into the parking garage that was earlier the site of violence but is now an affective map of desolation and loneliness. All hope for Irene and Driver is gone, the anonymity of the parking garage be-hind Irene in a medium, straight angle shot slowly swallows her up, eradicating her relation and history with Driver. The reverse shots of Driver are low angle, medium close-ups that reveal the blood splatter over his jacket and his slowly growing realization that she will never be his. The cinematic space cuts them off from each other, just as the passionate noosign has been disrupted and violated by Driver’s violence. Although the film continues, there is no resolu-tion for Driver and Irene, we know that he must leave town.

COLLISIONS

The central motif of Drive is that of movement and its corollary, speed. As we have seen, Drive creates two points along a continuum of speed, ranging from slow to fast. Although primarily associated with cinematic speed, there is also the movement of sensation. Non-places are identified with intensely violent movement, while Non-places are filled with calm, relaxing sensations. The connections between place/non-place, speed, and sensation are therefore paramount for the movie, and are narrativized through collisions, where move-ment becomes violence. Scott Bukatman points out the associations of movement, arguing that “Movement is the fact of traversing ter-rain, crossing borders, and transgressing boundaries. Movement

performs freedom, a resistance to strategic spaces of control” (Bu-katman 2003, 122). Augé’s non-places are clearly marked as spaces of control, evident in the signs, social structures put into place and the automation of movement within non-places. Conversely, Driver constantly performs movements which place him outside control, although the unexpected introduction of calm places performs a kind of violence of sensation on Driver. Suddenly, he is faced with a sense of belonging he has clearly never known before, Irene becom-ing the violence of sensation which almost makes Driver stay put.

Instead, Driver is confronted with the sensation of violence, at-tempts at placing him under control of non-places and their stric-tures. While non-places dissolve social contracts, control remains present. In fact, control reveals itself to be not a contract but a one-sided relation which we are expected to submit to. Driver rejects this relation, refusing to submit to an uneven distribution of power, and instead transgresses fixed boundaries by traversing the city-scape and leaving Los Angeles.

The tragedy of Drive is the dissolution of sensation; Driver and Irene fall into a kind of apathetic numbness as they slip apart.

Driver is forced to convert his violence of sensation (his love for Irene) into the sensation of violence (physical brutality) and wreak havoc and vengeance on the people threatening Standard and Irene.

As Driver drives off into the sunset, we know that Irene is safe but at the expense of her emotional life. Visually, Driver leaves into a desolate any-space-whatever, first seen on the parking lot where he is going to hand over the money but ends up killing the mob boss as the final act of violence. The killing stab is shot against the sun, creating silhouettes and then shows the mob boss dying in shadow outlines against the parking lot asphalt concrete. Add to this the crosscutting between Irene going to Driver’s apartment door, the hallway deep shadows, the poignancy of the moment is intensified.

Elsewhere, I have discussed how movement pulls the specta-tor along the movie’s affective modulation (see Ledet Christiansen 2013), but in Drive movement is far more complicated and fraught with affective dips and peaks. While we root for the emotional ties

Driver forms with Irene, we are as shocked as Irene when he crush-es the gangster in the elevator, as well as his other violent outbursts.

The extreme oscillation in affective tone makes it impossible for us to understand Driver. He remains a cipher throughout the movie, and we know that his inevitable destiny is to move on, crossing into an anonymous non-place yet again. Place and non-place are thereby defined primarily through their intensities and the violence these spaces enact on people moving through them.

As these spaces map almost exactly on to Augé’s distinction, what becomes evident is the flattening of affect in non-places;

numbness, separation, and alienation are the contingent affects as-sociated with non-places, the anonymity of the cityscape generates anonymity in the people moving through them. Violence seems to be the only real sensation available in the undifferentiated urban tissue, while more utopian passions are only found in short pulses, flowers briefly blooming in the cracks of concrete, such as the park Irene and Driver have their one moment of happiness in. The flat-tening of affect in non-places does not, it must be emphasized, mean low intensity or lack of affect. Rather, it means that very few modu-lations of affective tone can occur in these non-places, indicating a kind of sameness and homogeneity. The freeway, roadside motels, and strip malls all induce feelings of numbness due to their homog-enous design and function. Identity, history, and relation evaporate precisely because there is only room for the incessant, continuous drone of the same, much like the ambient drone on the soundtrack of Drive which also induces an almost trance-like state.

The way Drive pulls us along its affective tone is by enacting this numbness through Driver; he remains unfazed throughout the movie. Even during his acts of extreme violence, Driver comes off as calm and detached, which is shocking for us as spectators, taking us by surprise. There is a strong oscillation between the sensations of numbness and detachment and those of startling violence. We are either overwhelmed by intense alienation as human relations decay and crumble, or stunned by equally intense violent outbursts. The modulation of non-places is thus one of extremes with little room

in-between and indicates that the intensity of non-places as integral to our experience of them. Both places and non-places open up for emotional experiences of them, and what is particular about non-places is that new modes of embodiment arise in how we relate to these anonymous zones of indifference. Driver’s affect-less stance provides a reaction if not exactly a way out. Constant motion, refus-ing to stay in one place for long, becomes a primary way of navi-gating non-places, of conforming yet resisting the numbness with which non-places are associated.

Non-places confront us with a sense of being which is as undif-ferentiated as the spaces it designates. In Drive this undifundif-ferentiated space is enacted through a Deleuzian any-space-whatever which fluctuates between violent sensations and sensations of violence.

Augé’s emphasis on the dissolution of social contractuality in non-places can in itself be regarded as a form of violence, although not necessarily physical violence. Feeling reconnected, with no sense of history, identity or social relation leaves subjects adrift, which is also the narrative arc of the movie. While emotional connections, feel-ings of love and belonging begin to shape places of calm sensations for Irene and Driver, it is the violence of dislocation which inevitably catches up with Driver, forcing him to leave. Any-spaces-whatever are therefore the affective equivalent of Augé’s non-places, where our experience becomes disjointed and flattened, the violent sensa-tion of the dissolusensa-tion of social contractuality.

REFERENCES

Augé, Marc. 1995. Non-Places: An Introduction to Super-Modernity.

London & New York: Verso Books.

Bukatman, Scott. 2003. Matters of Gravity: Special Effects and Super-men in the 20th Century. Durham: Duke University Press.

Deleuze, Gilles. 2005. Cinema 1: The Movement-Image. London: Con-tinuum International Publishing Group.

Ledet Christiansen, Steen. 2013. “Hyper Attention Blockbusters:

Christopher Nolan’s Batman Trilogy” Akademisk Kvarter 7: 143-157.

Soja, Edward W. 1989. Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory. London & New York: Verso Books.

FILM

Drive. 2011. Dir. Nicolas Winding Refn. FilmDistrict.