The Drive Soundtrack: "Under Your Spell" by Desire Captures You in a Free-falling Raindrop of Sound
The Drive Soundtrack:
Saturating you with ambient night nostalgia.
The love of my life holds me in her arms, as I gasp out my last dying breaths on the pavement, and sirens wail in the distance. She leans forward to hear my last words, my profession of infinite love for her, and I say:
“My only wish is that I could have rocked a retro 80’s jacket with a giant yellow embroidered scorpion on the back the way that Ryan Gosling did in Drive.”
Drive is a 2011 Thriller/Crime/Watch Ryan Gosling do Smooth Car Stuff film which received a lot of attention for its big cast but could still be considered an “arthouse film”. The Drive soundtrack puts it into “this movie is a 2010s classic” territory.
As I sipped upon a fine 1742 pirate’s grog while doing the scholarly research associated with the Drive soundtrack and a Cinematic Atmosphere article, I found diverse analysis, ranging from “Drive is a retelling of an ancient Scorpion/frog fable” to “Drive is a fairytale about a real hero”. All credible, but we’re not here to write a dissertation on why Ryan Gosling wears his toothpick in the right side of his mouth instead of the left.
We’re here
for the atmosphere.
In multiple moments, from the high-tension opening getaway sequence to the final scene of the movie, Drive sets an absolutely gorgeous mood of floating through the dream. The main characters, Ryan Gosling and Carey Mulligan use minimalist dialogue, like a dream. They rely on expressions and extended eye contact with each other, like when you wake up from a dream, and you’re left with the heavy nostalgia of the people and the place, but not the words that were exchanged.
The Drive soundtrack and score (listen here) supports this dreamscape fantasy. The score by Cliff Martinez picks you up like a little baby, sets you in a stroller, then walks you through and has your soft baby brain absorb ambient sounds and lush, noir night drives.
“Under Your Spell” by Desire is the pinnacle of the mood – it is the calm rolling of a wave before it crashes down soon after with scenes of brutal violence. The centerpiece of the Drive soundtrack is two individuals looking into each other from across the room with subdued but connected understanding. It is – well, let’s just play the dang scene.
You really don’t need much context for this scene – it’s self-contained in a moment, like a dream, and Oscar Isaac explains the reality of why they celebrate. The sound is so explicitly relevant to the mood, the way the song reverb floods through the door and walls like a sub-woofer played in ten feet of water. It creates this submersed moment – you’re sunk into the sound with them, the trance of their bonding, the slight curl of their lips, and the entranced gaze.
A first cousin of Atmosphere is Nostalgia, and Drive, like The Spectacular Now, dunks your head into a bucket of nostalgia and holds it there. It’s in the 80s electro vibes, in the retro scorpion-embroidered driving jacket worn by Gosling, in the way it lets The Driver glide through the city, deep in thought, immersed in the dream.
I often compare this movie to Heat, the ’95 heist epic with Robert De Niro. Both movies use the city of Los Angeles as a playground for Atmosphere at night. The directors, Michael Mann and Nicolas Winding Refn gravitate to noir night drive scenes. Their protagonists are quiet criminal professionals, detached from human emotion. Both Drive and Heat contrast brutal violence with periods of ambient introspection (the soundtrack of that movie was done by Moby).
The Drive soundtrack achieves the heavy lingering nostalgia through the “Under Your Spell” scene. It’s like when you wake up and remember that the person in that dream is no longer there. Those are the dreams in which you roll over and close your eyes — you’re not ready to leave what you no longer have.
For 95 minutes, the Drive soundtrack levitates you in a light rainfall of sound, the ethereal calm. During the four minutes of “Under Your Spell”, you are captured in a raindrop.
It lets you free-fall, drunk in the moment, without ever touching the ground.
Reasons to quit your job immediately and go home to watch “Drive”:
1.) Ryan Gosling, Carey Mulligan, Oscar Isaac, Ron Perlman, Bryan Cranston, and Nemo’s dad! (AKA Albert Brooks).
2.) It’s a late-night movie. Watch this at 1 AM with all the lights out, and you’ll feel like you’re in Los Angeles driving a getaway car while you also drift into an ambient trance.
3.) If the “quiet antihero” trope turns you on. Ryan Gosling plays it perfectly. But he’s also quiet Ryan Gosling in what, seven movies?! Forget that — just go watch it.
Movies with Ryan Gosling to get you bothered:
The Big Short — great movie and you can see him scream “jacked to the tits”
Blade Runner 2049
Crazy, Stupid Love to check in on the Ryan Gosling 24-pack abs
Movies with Carey Mulligan to get you bothered:
Shame
Never Let Me Go
The Great Gatsby