How Drive — and Almost Dying — Changed Nicolas Winding Refn

On its anniversary, the Danish director reflects on the 2011 movie that changed his career.

Fifteen years ago, Nicolas Winding Refn released the Ryan Gosling–starring Drive, and everything changed forever. At least for him. For starters, Drive’s dreamy and unabashed aestheticism represented a break from the rougher, more visceral films on which Winding Refn had built his reputation. The Danish director’s Pusher trilogy (which was restored and rereleased last year) had been handheld, hyperrealistic, and savage; Drive, on the other hand, was ethereal and moody, its characters submerged, their delivery precise. Even though it wasn’t a massive hit, the widely acclaimed Drive put Winding Refn on the map. Suddenly, everybody seemed to know who he was.

Since then, Winding Refn has continued down that path, making visually sumptuous and narratively oblique films (often with stars, or emerging stars) that increasingly feel like dream visions. The reviews haven’t been as kind, however. His most recent feature, Her Private Hell, premiered at Cannes this May to almost universally dismissive reviews and was recently released to pretty dire box-office returns. But it’s also gorgeous to look at and listen to, with a mood that pulls us in even if the story pretty much never makes sense; an incredible score by Pino Donaggio helps as well. (I’m still kicking myself for not seeing it on the big screen when I had the chance.)
When I first interviewed Winding Refn back in 2010, he was chatty and self-deprecating, a charming movie nerd full of references and a boyish love of genre. In the years since, his demeanor has become somewhat different, perhaps befitting his reputation as a Cannes-anointed aesthete and provocateur. He can be enigmatic, prone to speaking in abstractions. At the same time, this may well be who he really is. The director insists that the films he’s been making since Drive are intensely personal and that his goal is always to be “100 percent me.”

There was a period where your work was almost vérité — handheld, rough, immediate. But then with Drive, it changed into something more aestheticized. Was that a conscious choice? 
Like most creators, you go through phases. I think staying too much in the same lane for too long can get less interesting, at least for me. It’s trying to wake up and ask yourself, “What would you like to do today?” And then going into something you’ve never done before, or trying to push the potential within your frame of abilities.

Were there periods where you felt that stagnation?
Not so much stagnation as a sense that you have pushed through a certain barrier, so you feel that you have done everything within that spectrum. You naturally continue to seek. The Pusher trilogy was very cinema verité–inspired, and then you suddenly turn around and begin to push boundaries around you. It started for me with Bronson and Valhalla Rising: Those films were shot back-to-back, so they were then almost combined into Drive — which opened up a new level of possibilities because of who was in it and where it was made and what it represented. And then I continued into that form of aesthetics, not just through narrative, but through symbolism and all the other ways that are not so contingent on traditional information. Not that there’s anything wrong with traditional narrative, but it’s fun to push as far as you can.

You talk about pushing boundaries. How is that expressed in terms of the actual act of filmmaking? Has the process changed for you at all?
I still very much enjoy the creative process, inventing the idea, developing the idea, producing the idea, and then finalizing the idea. That’s where you’re like a breathing, living organism that feels pleasure and pain. It’s not so much about your ego or your vanity; it’s about the act of creativity, and it’s limitless. Sometimes you get to the end of the trip, and you have to seek something different. It just feels like a natural evolution.

When I first interviewed you, around the time of Valhalla Rising, we went through the most violent scenes in your films and talked about what inspired them. How has your relationship to onscreen violence changed? 
I believe that art is an act of violence. It’s meant to violate you creatively, spiritually, to inspire you. I think there’s certainly a very different tonality between Pusher and Her Private Hell. They’re on opposite ends of the spectrum. The violence becomes more erratic, painless, and more spiritual compared to, let’s say, Pusher, which was grittier and more painful.

I was rewatching Her Private Hell the other day, and I felt that there’s a certain numbness to violence in the characters of that film. Then I thought, Is it numbness or is it innocence? Are they numb to the idea of violence, or do they simply not know how to process it? Again, that’s very different from some of your earlier movies, like Bleeder. 
I think that the films of my past have dealt with, let’s call it the real world, where everything was authentic rather than fabricated. The violence was easier to process then as a negative act, something destructive. But the more theatrical everything became, it wasn’t so much that the characters weren’t processing, but violence was part of that world, part of the installation. You can say that Pusher is a film that tries to push authenticity. How real could we make it? Whereas Her Private Hell is essentially an installation using moving-image techniques. The violence in both films is equally relevant, but they are spiritually completely different — where one is a mirror of authenticity, the other one is essentially a painting.

You describe Her Private Hell as an installation. We place a lot of importance on narrative when we respond to movies: whether the story makes sense or the characters make sense. We often don’t place enough emphasis on space and how something looks — which is sometimes more important. In terms of that look, that style, that space, where does that come from?
I have an urge, I guess, of wanting to use the film medium as a format, as the scaffold of what an installation would look like on film. Doesn’t mean it doesn’t have narrative. It actually has an enormous amount of narrative, because it’s not relying on just giving or taking information or withholding information. But there’s equally as much storytelling in going to a museum and seeing a painting or a photograph, or going to a gallery to experience an installation. What I enjoyed in making Her Private Hell was that I was able to build a shrine to everything that I found interesting. Pusher was my first film, and I was 24 when I made it. I was 55 when I made Her Private Hell. Two different approaches, but seeking the same result.

What is that result you’re looking for?
It is 100 percent me. That’s all you can really offer anyone, is you.

Her Private Hell premiered at Cannes. It was released recently theatrically. You did not get your best reviews for that one. Your films are certainly distinctive. When “the public” doesn’t get a movie, does that bother you at all? How do you respond to criticism?
The more you ostracize yourself from what is considered normal or acceptable, the more you obviously open yourself up to a very divisive opinion. And to me, what is interesting is the spectrum of how people were reacting to Pusher when that was released, compared to the much more versatile and passionate and polarized opinions that they had to a movie like Her Private Hell. There’s something in that journey, that odyssey, that is thrilling. You are essentially crafting an experience that is so explosive, it can generate either such hatred (which I certainly got a lot of) or such enormous passion. That’s validation that creativity has a purpose of not just entertaining — which it has to do — but also of penetrating the mind and generating experiences that are so visceral that the spectators’ desire to express themselves is enormous. They cannot not express themselves, they have to. That’s when art has a purpose. It’s a validation of its existence.

At the same time, as a filmmaker, you exist in an industry. When you do work like this, as happy as you might be with it, does it become harder to explain to people what you’re trying to do — whether it’s actors or financiers or producers? Is it harder to continue working in the way that you want?
Yes and no. A director’s obligation is to inspire everyone to follow his or her vision. That’s what we’re there to do. So you have to believe in it so much that everyone else follows you up that hill. Financially, if you work within certain constraints, there’s always an opportunity. Everyone has obligations. Everything is a financial contract. If you spend X amount of money, it needs to make X amount of money. At the end of the day, as entertainers, we’re just traveling from city to city selling ourselves. There’s that kind of road-movie mentality that your life goes through: the journey of trying to find money to make money so you can be free and be yourself. So it’s a hard question to answer in terms of yes or no, because it’s more about what do you want to do with your life? Who do you want to be? What do you desire? When God comes and takes you and asks you if it was fun living, what are you going to say? I want to be able to say, “Hell yeah, it was a lot of fun, because I got to be free.”

Are you a religious man?
I think anyone that has experienced death becomes religious no matter what. And anyone who’s going to experience death will essentially, at that moment, turn to faith.

Are you talking about your experience from a few years ago, when you were dead for half an hour and then were brought back?
Oh, yeah. I mean, that makes you understand certain things. I always say, “God gave me a second chance. How lucky am I?” And so there must be a purpose for that. I must carry on being free and being myself. Don’t go back, go forward. And at the end of the day, you can always say, “Well, I made it with my heart.” How can you even have an opinion about that? It is as pure as tears in the rain, to quote a great movie. There’s so much emphasis on Why are you not like this? Why don’t you do that? How come it’s not that or this? They should rather ask, Why is it not that? Why is it not this? I think that’s what creativity is, to inspire the viewer or the experiencer to seek what’s not there — you become engaged in a different way than just being informed. Information is seductive, but then you’re onto something new, a new piece of information. That’s terrific. But for me, there must be more. Otherwise, you are wasting half your life going in circles. And trust me, every second is precious. I’ve been there. When you ask for those five more minutes from God, man, you’re really wanting those five minutes. My shoulders are as broad as they can be to carry all the sins of everything around me, because you can’t say I didn’t do it with my heart. And where I came from to where I am now, it’s just part of the trip. What’s more interesting is what’s going to come next.

Are you actually working on Maniac Cop right now?
Absolutely.

What does a Nicolas Winding Refn Maniac Cop look like?
A soup can.