a wonderful take on the defining song of one of my favourite movies of all time. producer brenton duvall takes the hook from jon brion's collecting things and sneaks it under neat mike posner's save your goodbye, updating the daydream-inducing acoustics and piggybacking them into 2012 with a little drum-and-synth work. this track's begging for a remix, but for the time being i like the unpolished version.
i don't quite know what to make of it yet. it was stylish as hell - plenty of aerial shots of los angeles, of topless strippers standing idly by as a man's hand is reduced to a congealed mess, of gosling staring soulfully (blankly?) through the windshield, out the window, at people, at objects, at seemingly nothing at all - but i'm not sure that there really was any... substance at the end of the tunnel. plenty of people suffered gratuitously violent ends and there was some hint of larger organized-crime concerns, but these elements do not a great drama make; and for a movie named with a single action verb, said verb played a miniscule role in the actual film itself. as much as i am a lover of the pregnant pause, for a character whose background is left entirely to the imagination, gosling's "driver" character is obnoxiously mute, leaving us to question whether his silence truly stems from an inner torment, or just because he ain't so good with the mouth-sounds (or perhaps for other reasons).
in any case, being the stylistic vehicle it is, the film puts its music to the forefront and left me with a few tracks that, while a bit off the beaten track, bring 80's miami back in a bold way. kavinsky & lovefoxxx's nightcall opens the film and does so brilliantly, and desire's under your spell plays a pivotal role in one of the movie's few truly poignant emotional moments.
