"Drive" or how I love Ryan Gosling

Up until this year Ryan Gosling has been something of and Indie idol. But with his recent releases, like the very fine “Crazy Stupid Love”, “Drive”, and the upcoming “The Ides of March” he is showing us he can carry big films.   I’m so glad.

Because I don’t think I could be more in love with Ryan Gosling if I tried!  In true cougar fashion, I could eat him up!!  Ever since his early appearance as Young Hercules, I have found him immensely charming.  In movies like “Half Nelson”, “Murder by Numbers” and “The Notebook”, I saw him as a really fine actor.  But it wasn’t until “Lars and the Real Girl” (a movie everyone should see but few have) that I saw his incredible ability.  He makes you care about a doll, really care, because he does.  I cried so hard at the end of that movie it took a little while to recover.  He really knows how to draw on our emotions, by being willing to show his vulnerability.  "Drive" is no exception.

I just saw “Drive” and I loved it, but it also left me with some mixed, confused feelings.  I found the music odd, but it did help the atmosphere of the movie, which was very quiet, yet hyper violent too.  Ryan’s nameless character, the driver was both sweet and sociopathic.  You could feel that his smile, which was always so sweet, was sometimes obviously used as a shield of his deep anger.

The quietness was not specifically the movie itself, but Ryan Gosling’s portrayal.  He was an island of stillness, and silence.  The entire mise-en-scene was designed to emphasize his isolation from the world around him.  The dark lighting in his apartment, and the way nothing personal of his character’s background was introduced.  The darkening of the light in the elevator scene, used to echo the dark about to manifest in him. The way he stood at his window, looking out at the world, yet separated from it. You could feel from his performance, some deep early trauma, echoed in the young boy seeing his father beaten. Then when his tentative connection with the Carey Mulligan’s character Irene is interrupted by the release of her husband from prison, you can see he is crushed, but so quietly crushed she does not realize how hurt he is.  His eyes tell the story.

This is a movie that does not talk down to the viewer, many of the things happening are left unsaid, but we understand anyway.  The creators of this movie did not feel they had to spell everything out for us.  Sometimes when you see a movie like this there is so much exposition that it feels ridiculous.  We don’t need the characters to explain their feeling to us, their action do it for them.  I wish I saw more movies like this that let you understand the plot through a natural progression instead of a forced voice over or unnatural dialog.   This one is a keeper!