I went and saw Drive a few weeks ago, and I’ve been digesting it ever since. There were a lot of things I liked about it, and a few I didn’t. But one thought stood out.

Drive is a movie about manhood. Not some Dickensian journey from boyhood into manhood, but manhood itself. Ryan Gosling, who plays the notably unnamed lead role, openly (and obviously) models his portrayal of the character after the iconic Steve McQueen. It’s a fitting model given the film’s car theme, but more fitting is the model of manliness McQueen became famous for; that is, quiet, atypically strong, and having a certain disregard for the rules.

Gosling’s character is painfully quiet, but never awkward about it. It quickly becomes clear how much this adds to his strength. He never utters a single unnecessary word, and so every word carries that much more weight. Somehow, though, he doesn’t come across as stoic or lifeless. Quite the opposite, in fact: there are montages of his developing relationship with Irene (Carey Mulligan) and her son that subtly but clearly communicate his feelings for them both.

Similarly subtle and powerful are his displays of anger. When a former customer recognizes him at a bar and sidles up to praise his skill and offer another job, he finally makes eye contact, staring the man full in the face and saying, “How about this — shut your mouth or I’ll kick your teeth down your throat and I’ll shut it for you.” Then he stares into his face for another 10 seconds or so. And that’s where the power is — not in the words, but in the silent stare afterwards.

But what truly, in my opinion, constitutes a new template for manhood in the 21st Century is the driver’s pattern of action throughout the film. He certainly isn’t a model citizen, but in classic “rebel protagonist” fashion has his own code of ethics that he never wavers from. He knows exactly who and what he wants to be, and he lives that way. When people important to him are in danger, he does what he can to get them out, regardless of how many rules he might need to break.

The movie doesn’t tell us that to be a man we should stomp people’s faces in. Not really. What it tells us is that as men we need to figure out our convictions, and then live them. Which is really a very old template for manhood. 

Here are a few lines I pulled out of The Insistence of Beauty, the 2004 collection of poems by Pulitzer Prize winner Stephen Dunn:

[He] knew that to live in this world was to trade

a few industrious hours for one beautiful one.

—The Stairway

Now I wanted to go inside where it was lamplit,

warm, everything artificial and mine.

—From the Garden

Ruin, with whom I’d come to flirt,

as usual was looking good.

—For Many Years

Herrings dead and aglow—

I should have been properly amazed,

the way anyone looking at a star

would be, realizing it was years away,

untouchable. Yet there it is, shining.

—The Past

I was calm, no one wants the kind of calm I was.

It tried your patience, it made you hungry for a man

who was hungry. I am that man, I said,

but I said it calmly.

—The Waiting

Fortunately in the midst of it all 

you came along with your singular beauty,

the truth of things for a while

tactile and unequivocal.

—Beliefs

Ok, now go read the collection yourself (it’ll take you all of an hour and a half). Poems should be read in their entirety.

Lately I’ve been wanting to dive back into the manly* authors. Here’s a list of what I’ll be reading this season:

• For Whom The Bell Tolls, Hemingway
• The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway
• Moby Dick, Melville
• Leaves of Grass, Whitman
• Walden; Or, Life in the Woods, Thoreau

*Caveat: I’ve also been wanting to finally read Jane Eyre, so I’ll probably read that at some point too.