WARNING: THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS ABOUT DRIVE!
If you’re reading this, then you’ve already had the chance to watch Nicolas Winding Refn’s pulpy crime-drama Drive, and hopefully enjoyed it as much as we did (be sure to read our Drive review).
Though Drive seems like a standard action/thriller (albeit with some art house style and flare), a lot of movie goers have walked away with questions about the movie’s final moments, which leave a fair amount of ambiguity hanging over the fate of “Driver,” the character played by Ryan Gosling.
In the past with our Shutter Island and Inception Ending Explanations, we here at Screen Rant have had to rely on our prowess as movie aficionados in order to form some logical deductions about what transpired in some of our favorite mind-bending movies, and what filmmakers intended with their ambiguous endings. In the case of Drive, however, we were fortunate enough to snag an explanation right from the primary source: director Nicolas Winding Refn.
When we last see Driver – bleeding out while behind the wheel of his car, before pulling himself together and speeding off into the night – there is a certain amount of lingering doubt about the literalness vs. figurativeness of what we are seeing. When I asked Refn first-hand what the ending of Drive was all about, I expected the typically coy filmmaker to hand me an equally coy answer. However, he was surprisingly straight forward in his response:
Well all my films always have open endings. All of them. Because I believe art is always best when…you talk about it and think about it, so forth. Maybe once in awhile I’ve gone too far, but I always believe in finding the right balance. And in ‘Drive’ he lives on for more and new adventures.
So there you have it – if you were wondering whether or not the ending of the film was to be taken literally, or was some metaphoric death scene, you at least now know how the director sees it.
He will live on to drive another day.
Refn has continuously referred to the film as a modern Grimm fairytale (unlikely hero rises to battle evil king, saves princess) and I for one always saw the ending as the hero saving the girl, while also being denied the “happily ever after” cliche he may want. Indeed, the implications of the film are such that Driver will likely speed off into new adventures, as Refn claims, albeit still stuck in the lonely and isolated existence in which we found him. The only difference is: he now knows what kind of hero he can be.
Do you have any thoughts to share about the ending of the film? Let us know in the comments.
Drive is now playing in theaters.
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stupid violent rubbish-more slaughter scenes than scenes with any audible dialogue
I wondered why the ‘Driver’ left the bag of cash with the dead guy in the parking lot…he’s already on the hook for it, and it is doubtful that the money will find its way back to the mob. He needed it, and might as well have taken it.
Okay I have thought a lot and the only thing i have to say about the end of the movie is pay attention to the shadows and the positioning of the sun…they showed all the other murders he committed and if you piece together the fact the body was behind the car and when driver kills bernie at the back of his car the shadow faces away from the car….reason they didnt show the kill…just the shadows we he is pulling away the shadow goes back towards where the car would have been parked….you dont sit with a stomach wound like that and just magically wake up and if he is alive your telling me that throughout an entire day no one came to look at the body in the middle of the parking lot…. also whenever he is driving at night the rearview mirror goes from showing a face that i feel resembles ryan gosling but isnt and then it will show Actual Ryan sorry for no periods needed to get thought down.
Love it. Please make sequel out of it. Will watch it.
I just played it for my Fiance on Netflix. She loved it too. You have to see it at least one more time to catch the brilliance of the directing and camera work, the use of music. I just saw it with her (my 4th time) and it still blows me away.