Ryan Gosling – Some Damn Fool's Thoughts

Grade: A

Violence is used in many different ways in film. Sometimes it’s a metaphor, sometimes it’s for shock-value, hell, sometimes it’s even used for laughs. In Drive, director Nicolas Winding Refn uses violence to suggest it’s an ingrained, and inescapable, part of human nature. Nobody in the movie seems particularly fond of hurting and killing, yet all ready to jump into it without a moment’s hesitation. The lead, aptly named Driver, played by Ryan Gosling, is a quiet, slow-moving, and deliberate man. That he works as a getaway driver for heists and a stunt driver for movies seems somewhat contradictory to his nature, until we realize it’s a cover for the rage monster that is constantly held at bay. When the situation calls for it, he explodes into a fury of violence, destroying anyone in his way. To say it’s a bad temper is to cheapen the frightening menace that is his true self.

The plot’s not new: a man with a questionable and checkered background meets a girl Irene (Carey Mulligan), and her son, who melt his icy heart and teach him about the value of human connection and all that. Matters get complicated when we learn Irene’s husband is getting out of jail and is coming home. When her husband needs his help to get out of debt from dangerous men, Driver agrees out of some stoic sense of honor and obligation. Things go wrong, and Driver channels his rage into revenge and protection mode and, needless to say, he kills fucking everyone. I trust that’s not a spoiler. If you’ve seen a noir film, you know that everybody dies. That’s not what important here. What is important is that all the players in this film know that they’re in a situation where everybody needs to die, there’s no other way out. They live in a bleak and hopeless world, and violence and death is really the only thing they’re capable of controlling.

The performances are what stand out in this movie. Gosling has made the stoic, silent, and dangerous character sort of his staple at this point. He doesn’t bring anything new to this role, but he does it well. Mulligan doesn’t do anything particularly special either, she just plays the scared and sad, two-note female that’s pretty much expected in this kind of movie. Bryan Cranston and Ron Perlman both have a lot of fun with their characters, a hard luck car guru and a criminal boss who loves being a criminal boss respectively. The most enjoyable far and away in this movie, though, is Albert Brooks. He plays Perlman’s crime partner, and a man who knows the requirements of his business but does not enjoy the things he has to do. Other than Driver, he’s the most dangerous character in the film, and it’s because, like Driver, he gets no joy from the violence. It’s simply something that’s ingrained inside him, a part of his world as necessary as anything else. Brooks is crass, yet tragic, and utterly dominates any room he finds himself in.

If there’s something in this film that doesn’t work very well, it’s the idea that any girl would be charmed by Ryan Gosling’s absence of personality. I get that he’s very good looking, but at some point responding with one word answers and unemotional smiles is simply not going to make you very many friends. It’s a small complaint, but one that enough movies make where I feel it’s acceptable to bring it up.

Drive uses stylized, hyper-violence to accentuate the absence of morality in its world. The fleeting glimpses of goodness we get are held onto so tightly that it becomes necessary to protect it by the most extreme measures. Driver is willing to destroy the world, and himself, if it means Irene and her son can live a relatively peaceful life. We never learn the origin of his violent ways, and the film is better for it. The only thing we need to know is that violence begets violence, until the world simply eats itself, and hopefully those left standing will know some small level of hope.

Directed by Derek Cianfrance

Starring: Ryan Gosling, Bradley Cooper, Eva Mendes

Grade: A

The Place Beyond the pines is really three movies in one. Three different stories, though related, are told, but not interweaving. The first third is a bit of a modern crime noir, second third is a police corruption tale, and the last third is the story of two wounded sons doing battle for their fathers’ sins. That it succeeds in all three modes is pretty remarkable. It teases us with its ambitions for a while, starting out as a minimalistic, character driven story and ending on an epic scale spanning two generations. Director Derek Cianfrance, who last gave us Blue Valentine (also starring Ryan Gosling), a toned down horribly depressing drama about a doomed marriage, sets his sights much higher this time.

The movie starts out with mumbling, stoic tough guy and circus daredevil, Luke (Gosling) discovering he has a one year old son. He makes the decision to do the right thing and stick around for the kid, even though he’s not really wanted. His baby momma Romina (Eva Mendes) still has feelings for him but her new man is not happy with Luke’s intrusion into their lives. Luke takes up robbing banks in order to support his son. Gosling knows this world well, he knows in this case it’s a lot more important what he doesn’t say rather than the dialogue that is used. Quietly mumbling his way through scenes helps shape this character and the bleakness of the world. Sometimes the script forgets that and gives moments of too much clarity, like when his bank-robbing friend tell him “If you ride like lightning you’re going to crash like thunder.” This comes from a character that smokes and drinks his way through life when he’s not driving the getaway truck. It’s not a terrible thing, and maybe it’s needed, but it feels a little forced. Soon, though, that obviously foreshadowing quote comes to fruition. A bank job goes wrong and has tragic consequences for Luke.

The second story is about hero cop Avery (Bradley Cooper), struggling with both a physical injury and severe damage to his psyche. He’s not quite so sure he’s the hero everybody thinks he is. His new role gets him into the inner circle and he quickly finds out about the corruption within his station. The crooked cops, led by Deluca (Ray Liotta at his Ray Liottaest) attempt to turn him to their cause, but Avery is too moral of a guy to be seduced. Or at least, that’s what we think initially. Avery, with the help of his Judge and politically powerful father, uses the situation and his new found knowledge to gain his own political influence and launch a career. Cooper plays this well, as someone who is a good man but too politically minded to ever truly be a morally centered person. Cooper’s recently gotten a lot of accolades for his acting and has come a long way from being the go-to asshole in an R-rated comedy. His work here is some of the more subtle I’ve seen from him.

The last section of the film jumps forward in time and tells the story of the two men’s sons unwillingly, and in one case unknowingly, dealing with the consequences of their father’s choices. The two teenagers, AJ and Jason, both seniors in high school, are drifting towards dark paths, though in different ways. One is withdrawn and isolated while the other is angry and sadistic. They fight, manipulate, and seek only to hurt each other, for reasons that are much clearer to us than them.

The three sections build towards a confrontation which ends in a confession, an apology, and if not exactly anything even remotely happy, there is at least an acceptance. This is, after all, a pretty noir world we’re in, and by definition we can’t get a happy ending. What we do get is a detailed, fully realized world populated by people who are in a constant struggle to find meaning and hope amidst the pain of an increasingly bleak existence and the city of Synecdoche has never looked so drab and lifeless. But the film is not interested in making you abandon all hope either, it wants to leave that possibility alive that things can finally work out, probably because that will make it all the more devastating when it doesn’t. Through everything the movie attempts to do and all the genres it encompasses, it finally settles on the good old-fashioned American epic. The mantra “Go west, young man” is at the center of its resolution, both literally and figuratively. One could argue that The Place Beyond the Pines tries to do too much, to be too much, but it’s that reckless ambition that defines the great American film, isn’t it?

Go see this movie!