This guy, huh? Like many people who have heard of Nicolas Refn, my first exposure to his films was his 2011 film Drive, which took me a while to see but I really liked it. Not necessarily for its story but for most part the visuals were really wonderful to look at at most parts and the soundtrack really fit the mood and tone said visuals were trying to set up. It was also easy to see when I played the game Hotline Miami when some people called it a video game version of Drive at least in some regards, and that wording might not have actually existed but it is a comparison that does work. Yet even though I really enjoyed the movie, I didn't have much of a desire to look up the rest of his work for a while.
At least until I heard about what a train wreck of a film his followup Only God Forgives was, which I caught a trailer of it once and like Drive, it had really cool visuals and had Ryan Gosling in it. Yet, from what I've heard the cinematography might have been the only good thing about the movie itself. After a while, I convinced myself to watch the movie just to see if the criticism that it was getting was justified. Here is where my experiences with watching a Nicolas Refn film start going into the territory of "what the fuck am I watching?" It is rather hard for me to summarize the plot of the movie without having to go to another source not necessarily because I didn't understand what was going on, but if I had to put it in words, it was more just not having a moment where everything clicks and things start making sense. The early stages of the film start off this way where this guy named Billy kills a under-aged prostitute and is caught by the cops. The Lieutenant (and maybe the main character of the movie itself) Chang lets the father of the girl beat up Billy, which gets too out of hand and Billy ends up being killed. Right after this, Chang cuts the father's arm off and I didn't understand why at first because when I first watched it I thought it was for killing Billy yet Chang was the one who let this happen. Looking up a synopsis made the scene make more sense yet not by much. I could go on for quite a while after this where the film just kind of go bonkers with the plotting where there is a plot where Gosling's character, Julian, is asked by his mother to track down his brothers killer yet there is a lot of times where things happen yet nothing happens at the same time. And for the most part, I get the criticisms of the movie, and I agree that the cinematography is wonderful along with just the visuals being the way they are (after learning that Refn suffers from mild color blindness, the way colors work in his films make a lot of sense).
A while later, I managed to watch Bronson (the oldest film of his that I have seen, in case you're wondering), though this was more of a curio on Tom Hardy since the only movies I had really watched that had him in it were Warrior and The Dark Knight Rises, which made me really interested in what other work he had done. It wasn't until I finished watching the movie that I put two and two together and realized that Refn was the one in the director's chair for this one as well, which took me longer than it should have as the first scene in the movie, where Bronson is on a stage talking to an audience to serve as some sort of stopgap in between moments of his life. This is another movie where not much of the plot made sense to me, which might have been partially due to my lack of knowledge in the subject matter and the amount of gaps in time that pass. I am unsure myself as to whether or not I really liked the movie or not, which is another sign that I have watched a Nicolas Refn film since out of the four I've seen, the only one that I have some sort of clear consensus on is Drive. As for this one, I found it rather intriguing at moments and thought that the character of Charlie Bronson was one that I was fascinated by which did add another interest point towards Tom Hardy as an actor.
Here is the most recent addition to his movies that I have watched and the one that made me want to do this post, Valhalla Rising. Another movie that I was interested in watching it mainly because of the actor in the lead, this time being Mads Mikkelsen. Now talk about someone who I really wish I had seen in other movies sooner, as my introduction to Mikkelsen was from the show Hannibal which made me see how fantastic he was and almost immediately had to see the other work he has done. This was one of them along with The Hunt (which I haven't seen yet) as well as realizing that he had actually worked with Refn before, such as in the first two films of his Pusher trilogy and Bleeder. What made me really want to watch Valhalla Rising was that the lead was an entirely silent character, which is something I haven't seen too often personally so I started watching it and the obvious came where the visuals of the film got me almost instantly and then the plot started coming into play and I'm trying to piece together what was going on. For those who aren't familiar, the film is about this mute prisoner named One Eye who escapes from his captors only to join a bunch of Christian crusaders who end up travelling to the Americas. The plot actually sounded cool, especially since I do have a soft spot for the Norse type of things, and for the most part I could get behind it. The weird thing though was that One Eye is apparently psychic since throughout the film, he has visions of the future which is partially how he was able to escape in the first place and he always follows his visions blindly. He also somehow communicates with this boy who was part of the community that held him prisoner despite the fact he doesn't speak, which is really given no explanation which I am unsure as to whether or not this hurts the film or not.
So, deciding if I like Nicolas Winding Refn as a director or not is one of those things that might end up perplexing me for years since the most obvious thing I like about him is his cinematography and visual style, while the rest kind of is a mixed bag. I also get his style due to his connection to Alejandro Jodorowsky, one of those guys whose movies I haven't seen aside from a few clips yet they do seem like glorious eye candy. For the most part, I'll try and catch some of his earlier work, mainly trying for Pusher so I can see his humble beginnings and looking forward to what he comes out with in the future. And hopefully, something in my brain clicks so I can enjoy the movie without being confused by it again.
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