I love creative attempts that tell historical events not through the classic historical narrative, but in a more inventive and humane way. Imagine this: you are watching the event in which Jesus allowed the demons inside a man to be sent into a nearby herd of pigs, but from the point of view of the pigs tumbling off the cliff. Or you are watching the sinking of the Titanic through the eyes of the fish. David Arrow takes a similar approach in his short film The Drive.
There are dozens of films and series about the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States. Many of them have focused on its criminal-investigation and conspiracy-theory angles. Arrow, however, tells the assassination through events centered on Kennedy’s daughter Caroline Kennedy, who was six years old at the time. More precisely, we watch through the perspective of a woman named Liz, who picks Caroline up from school and sets off to take her to a sleepover with her friends. Liz picks up Caroline and the other children on an ordinary, sunny day, and while on the road, she learns that Kennedy has been shot. But the film doesn’t announce this news to us directly and plainly. It proceeds through people stopping their cars by the roadside and crying, the faint sound of the word “shot” coming from the radio, and the increasingly strange behavior of the people around. Considering the period in which the film is set, you understand what has happened. But what we see at first is the story of an ordinary woman trying to protect the children from the bad news coming over the radio. At the end of the film, real footage of Caroline Kennedy appears on screen, blurred, and you say, “Ah, now I get it!”
As a director, you can explain the story you’re telling to the audience openly. Or instead, you can plant small clues and expect the audience to piece them together. When you choose the second path, keeping the audience’s curiosity alive is as important as helping them understand the story. David Arrow fits a surprising amount into his short runtime of about 13 minutes and manages to keep the viewer inside the story until the very last moment. Moreover, he does this not by constantly reminding us of the weight of a historical event, but by showing how an ordinary day gradually turns into an extraordinary moment.
So what do you do if you have a low budget and your story is set in 1960s America? You would probably use a few period sets and try to fill in the rest with CGI. However, the flaws of low-budget visual effects can easily distract the audience, especially in period films. David Arrow takes a smarter route in The Drive. He uses camera angles that focus on the actress’s face and at times trap her in the cramped space she is in. This way, we can follow even the smallest change in the character’s face, and we also feel the claustrophobic atmosphere inside the car. Instead of forcing us to keep looking outside, the camera makes us focus on Liz’s face and reactions. This choice also serves the film’s storytelling, because Liz hiding her own anxiety while trying to protect the children is conveyed through facial expressions and body language rather than dialogue.
Furthermore, the film involves visually demanding elements such as a constantly moving car and a changing background. Despite this, David Arrow uses the possibilities offered by the limited space and tight camera angles to produce images that are a real pleasure to look at. The Drive shows that telling a major historical event doesn’t necessarily require large-scale scenes, long explanations, or flashy visual effects. Sometimes it is enough to convey not history itself, but what an ordinary person caught in the middle of history felt at that moment. I think the film’s real achievement lies precisely here.
