There is nothing quite like the experience of driving. The second you sit behind the wheel of a car a whole realm of possibilities immediately opens up to you. A car represents freedom to go anywhere the road leads. A car can also act as a private domicile. A car is a mobile room where you can scream and sing and no one can hear you. A car can represent connection. Nothing bonds to people like a long road trip or a daily carpool. A car and the act of driving can mean a million different things to a million different people. For the characters of Jake Gittes from Chinatown and The Driver from drive, cars represent both a literal and metaphorical need to escape.
In Chinatown, Jake Gittes is a master of the motor getaway. Consistently in the film, whenever Jake gets into a jam, its a car that takes him to safety. When he is escaping the country club he does so by hoping into a car last minute. When he is escaping the Lieutenant, he does so scrunched down in the passenger seat of a car. Evelyn Cross tries to escape in a car in the final scene of the film, however, she dies behind the wheel of that car that was supposed to take her to freedom. Jake’s car also turns against him when he unsuccessfully tries to escape the farmers and crashes. In Chinatown as much as cars are an escape they are also confining. Cars bring characters to freedom but they are also fickle machines that strand characters far from home and far from their destination.
The Driver in Drive has a very similar relationship with driving as the characters in Chinatown but in a more metaphorical sense. The Driver literally uses cars to help people escape but his own relationship to driving is nothing like the criminals he chauffeurs. The driver uses cars to escape to the world of violence he is so deeply entrenched in. He drives Irene along the dried up path of the L.A river to a small enclosure of natural beauty. He uses the act of driving to escape to real world where there are so many external factors preventing himself and Irene from being happy. In the very final shots of the film, as The Driver gets into a car and drives away, it is implied that he is finally escaping the cycle of violence. As a stunt driver he is told where and how to drive a car and as a get away driver he is forced to use the car for the sake of others greed. As he sits behind the wheel at the end of the film he is taking control of the machine that he has let others tell him how to control for so long and taking control of it for himself and using it to go where he wants to go. This journey with hit car mirrors The Drivers own journey of learning how to to be used and fit the role he is told to play.
In every depiction of L.A the one commonality is disjointedness. L.A is compiled of all these radically different environments. For every trashy urban wasteland, there is a spot of serene natural beauty. For every neighborhood of fake people and and plastic perfection, there is a community of genuineness and artistic expression. For all its duality, the one consistent factor each resident of L.A can rely on is their car. A car can bring you from the violent streets of chinatown to glamorous sound stages of Hollywood but its still the same car. Jake Gittes tries to balance his work as private investigator with his personal life. The Driver tries to balance his life of violence with his desire for peace. When all the parts of ones world feel like they are fighting one another a car is a necessary constant. When ones life is out of their control a car allows them at least one thing that they have control over. We spend so much of ours lives in-between the places we want to be and yet we still often forget the importance of whats taking us there.
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