In Derek Cianfrance’s 2010 love-on-the-rocks heartbreaker Blue Valentine, Ryan Gosling plays a husband and father, Dean, who seems to be just a nuisance to his wife, Michelle Williams’ Cindy, a harried nurse. She hurries to get her daughter to school, while Dean, relishing the role of fun dad, turns breakfast into a game. “Let’s eat like leopards!” he suggests, scattering raisins picked from his daughter’s bowl of oatmeal on the kitchen table, which they both devour with the taste of a wild animal. In a flashback, we see a younger Dean who, in his job as a transporter, has been tasked with unpacking the belongings of an elderly, frail man who has just been moved to a nursing home. He removes dishes, photos and knick-knacks from their packaging with casual tenderness, aware that each item bears the fingerprints of a lifetime. Many talented actors – Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino, Paul Newman – have cited Marlon Brando as an inspiration and influence. But in the realm of casual gesture — the absent-minded tug of a shirt collar, perhaps, or a glance so fleeting the camera almost missed it — Gosling may be Brando’s true heir. The work he puts into his characters is translucent, evanescent; the result is a flash of fireflies that you are lucky to catch.
Gosling, now 43, was around 30 when he made Blue Valentine. This film came about six years after it broke out into romantic tears The notebook, and four years after he received an Oscar nomination for his disarming performance as a dissolute, cheerful high school teacher with a drug problem in Half Nelson. He would play a daredevil biker who resorts to robbery to support his son. (The place Beyond the Pines), the resolutely discreet astronaut Neil Armstrong (First man), and a futuristic LAPD officer in the sequel to one of the most beloved sci-fi films of all time (Blade Runner 2049). His next project, recently announced, is Ave Maria Project, a space drama directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller. But for now, Gosling is riding a lively new wave of his own creation, having taken on two successive roles that may seem less serious or consequential, but which may actually be the beginning of a golden age. It’s hard to find charm in 2024: Most of us are exhausted just managing to survive, when we’re not freaking out about a world that could be falling apart right before our ears. The Ryan Gosling of 2024 is the antidote to all of this. At a time when living often seems like a chore, he makes acting feel like dancing.
In his new film, The fallen guy, Gosling plays Colt Seavers, an arrogant stuntman who breaks his back performing a routine yet dangerous stunt. Just minutes earlier, he was flirting with camerawoman Jody Moreno, played by Emily Blunt – they fantasized about running away, just the two of them, sitting “somewhere on the beach, wearing bathing suits, drinking spicy margaritas and making bad decisions,” like says Colt, borrowing Jody’s British vernacular for the word Swimsuit. The next thing he knows is that he is being carried away on a stretcher; during his long recovery, he loses his mojo and turns Jody into ghosts. Now she’s making her directorial debut on a sci-fi blockbuster filmed in Australia and has requested Colt’s stunt skills – or so he was led to believe. When he arrives on set, she wants nothing to do with him. Winning her back involves tracking down her movie star (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), who has mysteriously disappeared.
Directed by longtime stuntman David Leitch, The fallen guy it’s about a guy with everything to prove, starring a guy with nothing to prove. After completing First man, Gosling took a break from filmmaking to spend time with his young family. (He is married to actress Eva Mendes, and the two have accomplished the miraculous Hollywood feat of keeping their personal lives private.) He resurfaced in 2022 with The Gray Man, a Netflix action movie that practically no one liked. And when the first promotional photos of Greta Gerwig Barbie were released, the internet couldn’t believe Google’s collective eyes. There was Gosling as Ken, the one with the nondescript plastic crotch, with blinding platinum hair and a tacky denim vest with nothing but a polished chest underneath. He looked ridiculous. He looked incredible. And at the Oscars, when he reprized the film’s best musical number, “I’m Just Ken” – an anthem of self-esteem and self-acceptance, with Gosling front and center in a pink sequin dress confident in his masculinity . suit – it felt like the movie gods had performed a miracle, for once turning this very square event into something you were glad you tuned in to watch.
Gosling, for now, can do no wrong, but those who have always loved him are neither surprised nor worried about a negative reaction. The truth is, we need Ryan Gosling more than he needs us. On April 13 he hosted Saturday night live for the third time, and the week before, he confessed his nervousness to Jimmy Fallon on Tonight’s program. Doing comedy on live TV is unnerving; he feared he might fall apart during a sketch. A few days later, Of course he laughed. During the show’s cold open, a variation on his popular alien abduction and probing routine – featuring guest Kate McKinnon – he lost control when she began imitating the aliens’ fascination with what he euphemistically called their “troll.” ”. nose.” When Gosling laughs a little, it’s a joyful, conspiratorial event. And when he breaks character, the puppy inside that cracked shell is just Gosling. Within a week, it became the most watched episode in SNL in Pavão. How could we not be happy to see you? Getting a glimpse of real movie stars as real people – and not as fake real people, as they so often appear to be – is a rare treat.
Gosling’s character in The fallen guy, on the other hand, it’s nothing like you or me. He’s a professional who gets paid to be set on fire, to drive cars that flip over so many times it’s surprising there’s any metal left in them, to surf on top of speeding trucks while slicing through the air with his cool karate moves. The film is an ode to all the guys – and apparently the women, although there are no obvious stunt doubles in the film – who take hard knocks to make things look real on film. (Gosling performs some stunts in the film, including a 12-story drop into the side of a building, which he says terrified him.) The fallen guy is so full of stunts that you’re likely to get drunk. It’s also a lot of fun.
And although Gosling has done comedies before (like The cool guys, 2016, with Russell Crowe, which in the years since its release has been recognized, rightly, as a work of genius), The fallen guy It’s his first time starring in a romantic comedy – and even then, this is hardly a typical romantic comedy, given its overarching obsession with guys jumping from great heights, driving at insane speeds, and hanging from helicopters mid-flight.
But you couldn’t ask for more of the frisson between Blunt, one of the best comic actors we have, and Gosling, who doesn’t play against her but opens a portal for her effervescent humor to flow. This is the kind of generosity a great actor can bring to comedy – it’s essential to listen and not just react. When Colt looks at Jody, even in his angriest moments – even when she punishes him by forcing him to do a defiant man-on-fire maneuver over and over again – his longing for love pours out of him like a strange blessing. There are little things he does, both to tease her and to convey an affection he can’t contain, like instinctively pulling up the slider on the large, unflattering sun hat she’s wearing to protect her from the Australian sun. , so that it is comfortable for her. chin. She hates it; but she kind of loves it – you can tell. We live in an age of too much entertainment: besides movies, there’s more TV than most of us can keep up with, and not all the shiny things vying for our attention can be trusted. But there is nothing about Gosling the actor, or even Gosling the movie star, that seems false or false. It offers us pleasure rather than mere passing distraction. And he probably doesn’t even realize how rare that is.
This story originally appeared on Time.com read the full story
