[quote]Big Kahuna wrote:
[quote]audiogarden1 wrote:
[quote]Cortes wrote:
Ryan Gosling has gotten a bad rap. He and Channing Tatum are not even in the same solar system. No joke, he is one of the most capable, talented actors working today. I’m not sure what movies happened to give him this boy-band reputation, but it is wholly undeserved.
Don’t believe me? Well then watch Drive. Or Blue Valentine. Or The Place Beyond the Pines.
I have a full on man-crush on Ryan Gosling. He is awesome.
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Drive sucked. The pacing was awful, and the acting was terrible. Gosling tried way too hard to come off as “cool” and just ended up being annoyingly quiet, short-spoken and downright awkward at times. Like in real life that chick wouldve asked herself on multiple occasions “what the fuck is wrong with this creep?” It also tried to overcome how boring it was with over-the-top violence that just seemed out of place and unrealistic.
Blue valentine had better acting but nothing superb. He gets too much credit for it simply for going outside his usual roles.
I would rather watch Dear John with Channing Tatum than the Note Book with Ryan Gosling. There i said it.
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Drive is a masterful adaptation of an 80’s themed noir, arthouse action film. Depending entirely on how you look at it, the flair of the film is not in it’s grander perspective but the subtlety on the side, like a Jigsaw that looks stale to some when finished, but has a brilliant micro-art hidden in each of the pieces.
It’s the way the film revels in it’s contrast of scenes to me, the way violence is laced intermittently into scenes of overwhelming poetry and visual artistry from the actors expressions and movements. It’s an action movie, a visual poem, and a love story that flows back and forth between each while still retaining the air of tranquility and it’s artistic roots. Sometimes I feel people focus on it too much for the car chases and the shooting, and the need for dialogue to play a large role, from the offset it’s cool and calculating and plays up to the audience to interpret the film for themselves, instead of taking a singular idea and shoving it down their throats. It’s an Avant-Garde Fast And Furious, as calmly philosophical as it is roaringly active.
Gosling’s intent was to appear exactly that. Annoyingly quiet, short spoken, and boldly awkward. His character is a lonely man that has sent his whole life growing up socially devoid and left to his own devices, a strict and controlling father and a more compassionate mother. The introversion and meticulous nature of Gosling’s character is shown multiple times throughout the film. He’s a very quiet, very intelligent, unimposing man that wants to keep to himself and is fearful of being close to or around others. He sees the way the chess pieces are going to move before they do, and he reacts accordingly, the elevator scene is a strong example of that, but a second viewing will unearth many more once you know what to look for.
The character himself has an obsessive compulsive personality, and maybe even a hint of Asperger’s, he’s been driving most of his life, and he focuses relentlessly on it. Doing the same thing over and over again to perfection, Gosling’s character makes up for his social ineptitude through his true calling, driving. He’s a man with a stunted emotional perspective, who sees the world around him as a physical and operational piece of machinery, clicking and tinkering along, he can see the cogs whirl, but he’s not a man that can see much farther than that. His principles are rigid and he makes an effort to stick to them unwaveringly, he does not go by the impulsiveness of emotion, but the stoic, ever-present moral law he’s deemed for himself. He’s not a titular hero by a desire to be that, but becomes that accidentally through the inability to let go of what he’s set in stone mentally as a path to follow. He has no desire to be the center of attention, and he’s incredibly reclusive around others, hence the lack of dialogue in his character. He has no base emotional personality that other, normal people have. He’s constantly shocked and taken aback by emotional exposure, because he simply cannot understand it. Reverting tirelessly to his repetitive, all important obsessive protocol.
The increasing violence is a direct representation of Gosling’s lack of emotion and thoroughness, the entire film is a story based around the profile of his character, and the actions and events of the movie, from start to finish, represent the expression of his mental abnormalities. It’s the basal story of an imperfect man evolving and becoming something he would never have expected himself to be, nor wanted to be, the violence is to serve the audience somewhat, but is more to be an insight to the Driver himself.
If you can get past the need for the usual cinema tropes and look for the beauty hidden under the skin of it, Drive will take your thoughts, opinions, emotions and tear them asunder, forcing you to rebuild them, but slowly, and meticulously.
Half the reason I see the film this way is because I didn’t at first. I thought it was good, but I didn’t believe the hype. I read the full final script, and watched it five times since that, just in an effort to understand what others saw that I didn’t. Reading the script will give you a much better insight than my posts about it ever will, if you have the patience and interest to wade through it, it’s a goldmine of poetic art.
Won’t get into Blue Valentine, because I will take up an entire page moaning and groaning about how I saw it.
(Also to Cortes, I assume you’ve seen Pines since we last spoke of it, I’d love if you could tell me what you thought of it.)[/quote]
Im not reading that. Drive sucked. I have no desire to argue with a film-critic about it, and nothing anyone says is going to change my mind about it.
