Ryan Gosling is kind of getting the Edward Norton treatment. "The best actor of our time..." "Plays sociopaths with great ease and delicate care..." I feel so bad for actors, good actors, when they get this kind of treatment from lazy journalists. The article I read most recently about Gosling was in GQ, and I almost gagged while reading it. I don't know what's happened to journalism and/or men's magazines. The article was crap: a drug out bio padded with flattery and meaningless details about the setting of the interview itself. The only part of the interview that was interesting was this fable Gosling wove about his ascent to success which invovled a "Move," a dance move which he started performing at seven which was highly sexual and hurtled him toward stardom. It was amusing, and played a great joke on his success, especially with The Notebook, which had/has women from all over creation dreaming about his sad eyes and true love, and probably wanting a piece of that action that had his love interest blurt after sex -- that was what I was missing this whole time? It was a nice movie, and I bawled like a baby, I admit, but that is all. Gosling's story about his overtly sexual "Move" was a slap in the face to this journalist who was drooling all over him as a wunderkind, giving him all sorts of inappropriate attention and acceptance. Yes, Gosling's done really well. I haven't seen The Believer yet, but it appears that Gosling did it justice. His turn in Half Nelson was really good. I recommend that movie to anyone who wants to make a difference in the world but feels trapped, not only by the mob of inactive and unthinking people in this country, but also by our own inadequacies and compulsions to both self-comfort and self-destruct. A pretty time worn idea for a film, but Gosling translates the script in a refreshingly modern way. But that's it. He's not a god. He's not finished with his body of work, so any reference to him being the best actor of our time is premature and stupid. This journalist was going along with everything Gosling was saying, everything about authenticity and how the media machine is not really desireable, and how rediculous celebrity is, while titalating the reader with what Gosling eats, how he eats it, what he says to the waitress, his angelic face, and how Gosling and the journalist hung out after the interview and sped off into the night together. I could have barfed, really.
But I'm not really sure what I want from an actor. What do I want him to talk about? The characters, I guess. The experience of acting. An analysis of character and film. But they aren't really experts, are they? They aren't analysts, they're actors. I'm still so dissatisfied with the interview. Maybe it's because I adore what Larry King said about interviewing -- that the interviewer should never say "I" at any point. The interview is NOT about the interviewer. Now with that said, I don't want to know what Gosling eats, unless it's relevant to a character or a film, or unless Gosling for some strange reason wants me to know. I don't want extensive commentary on where they eat, because I don't really care. I don't want this journalists impression of Gosling or the interview -- I just want the facts. I don't want a thick filter on what happened. And I don't want to know about some hack journalist and how he got to hang out with the celebrity. Aside from the facts about Gosling's life, the reader could have inserted any other young actor out there into this piece. That makes it really crappy journalism, if you ask me.
With that rant out of the way, I saw Lars and the Real Girl, which stars Ryan Gosling as an emotionally repressed young man unable to relate to people around him, even when he wants to do so. He buys a Real Doll, a silcone mold of a woman that is anatomically correct, and proceeds to present her to the world around him, his family and small town, as a living woman from Brazil, who is an orphan missionary, bound to a wheelchair. Of course some expected antics ensue, but basically after the town psychologist decides that Lars' delusion is harmless, everyone who cares for him goes along with it.
This film was really great. Gosling was superb. He wasn't charming or romantic or cute. He was tragic, and hopeful, and effective. The supporting cast worked. But Gosling's performance was the most moving and relateable.
There are moments in the film that were so wonderfully painful. In a scene where Lars takes Bianca to an office party, he ends up dancing with her (as many of the characters at the party are already well acquainted with Bianca, and have brought her out on the dance floor). He looks comical at first as the camera pans to Lars on the floor, music blaring, people close to him -- he is sawying back and forth with one hand in a loose fist and held up in a dance fashion, eyes screwed shut, but as the camera stays with the image, with Bianca hinted upon in the far right corner, you realise that this is very painful for Lars. Lars doesn't like loud music, it hurts his ears. Lars doesn't like people close to him, and avoids contact, because it hurts his skin. Lars sits in the back of the church, avoiding most conversation -- dancing in a crowd would be emotionally painful for him. But he LOVES Bianca, and is so HAPPY to be dancing WITH HER. The happiness he is experiencing is so painful, but he doesn't run from the pain, he embraces it, and by paying that price, he earns happiness. After you are done smiling at his goofy dance, you realise that he is growing, and you see how his delusion, however uncomfortable it makes us, is his vehicle to happiness. But that is cliche, is it not? Isn't this an age-old tale? Sure. But Gosling is so poignant and so believeable, the tale is fresh and emotion is stirred anew. Feeling Lars' pain is pivotal to this movie working, and it is the actor's repsonsibility to provide that communication, which Gosling does well.
This does not make me want to eat dinner with Gosling, or be his friend, or have rainy, drippy sex with him in a restored antebellum mansion. It makes me want to see him act more, again, for a long time. I would have liked to hear him comment on the complexity of the character, how he arrived at the physical charateristics of Lars, as the character is largely physical, and must have taken immense discipline to create. I would like to hear him comment on the experience of translating pain through a characters personality. I would like a little humanity -- these journalists are such schmucks, mucking up opportunity to bring some of the actor's true essence to a piece.
So go see Lars and the Real Girl, and don't read GQ.
5 comments:
Great post! I couldn't agree more.
For the most part, I don't want actors to talk unless they are delivering witty dialogue written by someone else. I direct your attention to Peter Sellars who plays a president who is actually ummm well, retarded would be the inappropriate word to use at this point, but nobody knows because they all interpret his actions/non-actions and "fill in the blanks" for themselves. I think Greta Garbo had the right idea -- preserve a mysterious air amid silence so that no one knows how dumb/empty/uninteresting one really is. Of course, I try to maintain a mysterious silence so that everyone thinks I'm much more interesting that I really am. You've seen how well I do at that little endeavor. Anyway, the only actor offhand that I actually enjoy listening to in interviews is David Duchovny who is a GENIUS. Otherwise, I just want to say, "Hush, sweetie, just look pretty/scary/interesting/morose" and be quiet." What an awful awful person I am. Sigh.
Hm. We can talk about this...later.
Even under the best of circumstances, it is tough for actors to discuss how they do what they do. I think it's somewhat akin to asking a teacher to explain how s/he makes the classroom environment work. Or perhaps it's more like asking a magician to explain how a trick works. So much of it is internal that to describe it, to put words to it, almost kills it--if you could even find words to describe it. I'm not sure that a magazine writer would ever be able to translate the process of acting into words that a reader could comprehend.
The best statement about acting, though, comes from Spencer Tracy. When asked about his process, he said, "Memorize your lines and don't bump into the furniture" (or words to that effect).
It's okay if an actor would rather not or finds it hard to articulate just how they arrive at their characters. I merely thought this particular journalist was a hack writer, showering far too much attention on HIMSELF, as if journalism is a reality series about writers. Since it was GQ, the writer could have gone into more detail about the actors personal style -- and in Los Angeles, that seems to be an easy subject to expound upon with an A-lister. I suppose there are simply more people that want to be close to celebrities than I, and they may have loved to imagine themselves in the writer's place.
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