Baby Driver: A Masterful Confluence of the Arts

I did a long stint in musical theater throughout middle school and high school, and I enjoyed just about every minute of it, which I realize is a shocking thing to say about middle school and high school drama theater. At any rate, my time in the program gave me an immense appreciation for music, so for a long time, I've found myself drawn to movies with great scores. However, I've never seen a movie use music like Edgar Wright's phenomenal Baby Driver did. This movie doesn't just settle for using a score as another flavor. No, practically everything about this movie screams music without once ever falling off the deep end into prominent, aesthetic unrealism. It's hard to tell where the music's service to the movie ends and where the movie's service to the music begins, and Wright weaves the two arts together effortlessly like an artistic tapestry.

Car chases are a staple of Baby Driver, a movie that follows Baby, the music-loving getaway driver for a criminal mastermind, and I'm amazed at the creativity Wright and his crew infuse into an otherwise-familiar spectacle here. These chases use music like the rest of us use air without ever seeming to run out of breath or ideas, and it's a remarkably impressive and innovative thing to witness. It's almost like the movie's fundamentally unorthodox style turns music into a main character, utilizing a lot of cutting on the beat, actions on the beat, and any other conceivable way to incorporate music into the story. Still, the style of Baby Driver never overshadows the story's characters. Every last player here has an undeniably distinctive voice and an unmistakably distinct way of doing things, down to the colorfully dissimilar way they dress, and no two characters ever blend. The acting from everyone involved is likewise incredible, and the casting and writing departments put in the work and paid their dues here to get a cast of A-listers and write them distinctive characters that highlight their individual skills as actors.

Baby Driver has an interesting grasp of surrealism, and it uses a lot of special, almost-unreal imagery, like a wall of laundromat washers with colorful and color-coded clothes. This movie is never dull, yet always grounded firmly within a surprisingly familiar sense of reality. Its creativity can be likewise astounding, and I can't think of many or even any other movies that would frame an illegal arms deal as an expensive meat sale. The non-stop music cues help this surrealism along, and I think the best thing I can compare Baby Driver to is an outstanding series of music videos. It's a non-stop well of creativity, and yet it's one that never floats away into cinematic la-la-land either. And when things start to go wrong, I love how this movie seems to slowly unravel. One little thing goes wrong, then another little thing goes wrong, then another, then another. I guess what I'm trying to say here is that the movie paces itself extremely well, maintaining a consistent burn throughout, like a Jenga tower slowly being dismantled. The only question, which you may have guessed by now, is this: how many blocks can be removed before the musical tower falls?

Baby Driver is one of my favorite movies, an explosion of top-shelf action, breathtaking romance, and some of the best needle drops I've heard in any movie. It plays with our perception of reality like a musician plays an instrument, never at a loss for another unique spectacle, a spectacle it somehow finds in the everyday inner city. I've heard it said that life is like listening to a favorite song, not to reach the ending, but to enjoy every note along the way. Baby Driver got the memo.

Baby Driver - 10/10

1 Peter 2:13-17