The first time I
was acquainted with Mr Gosling was through Drive. I was thoroughly tired after
a long day at a shoot for a client from Britain and my body was pleading for some
relaxation, ideally in form of a good night of sleep perhaps, and instead I
found myself, on a whim, playing the DVD of Drive. What began as sluggish, and laden
with melancholic visuals, had me seized in due course by Mr Gosling’s strength of
the sinister. It was as if he had this simmering volcano effect to his rather
subdued performance, and whenever it erupted, it engulfed you, leaving you no
less entombed in your seats quite akin the mummified populace of Pompeii along
the path of Mount Vesuvius. In bated and tense breath, I reached the end of the
motion picture and felt as if I had been stabbed hard. I found myself watching
it over and over again, and sensed every time I watched it, it spoke rather
unswervingly to the iniquity that very much existed in me. Something that
exists in everyone else too, just that everyone cloaks it for the fear of
societal judgement.
I then greedily savoured
The Ides Of March and was overwhelmed by the man’s ability to invade my senses in
totality. I mean, how? How did a kid from around the corner supersede Clooney (whom
many consider sexy while I think he’s just about ordinary) with his cold portrayal
that is in no way comparable to Clooney? I watched Ides numerous times and unearthed
that some of the characters in the novella I was writing at that point had
obtained Mr Gosling’s mannerisms rather unconsciously. That is when it first
dawned upon me that this was no ordinary man. That luck had no role to play in
his getting where he had brought himself. That it was a design of providence, which
had sent him to mesmerise us with his dazzle and brilliance. At the same time
one could not but help ignoring the notion that with his depiction of evil, (he
had the nerve to essay the same without any impetus) he communicated rather directly to the evil in us.
Then I watched Lars And The
Real Girl; another splendid portrayal of the mechanics of the drifting mind.
The critics might have dismissed it, and many might have thought it atrocious:
concept of believing that a doll could be real, but I ask why not? We have
unlabelled anxieties that have taken refuge in our heads that we muffle mainly
out of fear. The human psyche is a very complex network of criss-crosses and
only the one who is entrenched in it knows its depths, so it would be
inappropriate for any one of us to poke at something that we do not understand.
And if Mr Gosling had the verve to accept a character as challenging as the one
chiselled out for him, we have to offer him credit for taking the risk rather
than writing him or the movie off. I offer a bow to the man for having helped
numerous others through his screen representation of Lars. I wonder how many
Lars might have found a means of letting themselves out of themselves and let
in the healing process, all because a young man took risks with a role many
others might have thought dangerous to accept. The crux – men will be men, and
as much as they love their women they still love their freedom more, and will only
readily accept a woman who will be compliant with whatever they say. Harsh
indeed, but the barefaced truth!
Next on my list: All
Good Things, and that was when I fell in love with Ryan. I felt he was playing
the essence of what every man felt and wanted. Wickedness is as innate to us as
our shadow. It is as inherent to us as breath. And yet we behave and pretend
that we are righteous human beings with values and ethics. I loved the way he
got what humanity has quite literally bottled into itself, and unleashed it onto
the screen with such impressive honesty. Granted, some might find his method grotesque,
mainly because he was showing them their real faces, but my question is how
long, and how far can we run away from who we quintessentially are? Violence is
unsettling, but it is very much running alongside blood in our veins, and this
is what Ryan helps you retrieve: the portions of your mind you are too afraid
to access though they are very much alive and breathing. He allows you to feel
what you feel and yet not feel anything about it. In a strange way, he is a
psychologist at a heightened level, who helps you rid you of your demons via
the characters he chooses and the distinctions they represent.
Crazy Stupid Love: well, well,
it was crazy and stupid and the only thing to love in it was Ryan. Initially, his
character was flat and flaky, but my sole reason to hold onto watching that
motion picture was because of Ryan. Although, I did find certain scenes interesting,
overall the movie offered nothing novel, nothing that one had grown to expect from
the reliable stables of the horse one could bet one’s money on christened Ryan.
Then again, I assumed, he had done the movie out of obligation, or even a
favour to Steve Carell, who in my opinion is a pathetic actor. Or one
plausibility might be that perhaps Ryan was plain lazy and was in the mood of
humouring himself with regards to how much he could stretch his stupidity on
screen.
Then arrived the
DVD of Half Nelson in the mail, and, man, what a journey it was! Like life,
that takes its own course despite us wanting to try and keep things in our
control. Like it throws on us surprises that would bewilder and haunt us. Like
we wish to live and love in the barest of our emotions: this movie had it all.
If the jokers at the Oscar committee had only been even one per cent as
intelligent as they so claim they would have given Ryan the Oscar for this
landmark performance that was infused with reality and reflection. I have this
feeling that Ryan would care two hoots for an Oscar, bot because he is not
bothered to be applauded for his talent, but because he is far profound a man
to care for a statuette provided by a bunch of jokers, to people they think
harbour talent, when they do not.
After The
Believer I could think of nothing else but the fact that in life we actually
hate that we most love. And in the oddest manner possible that is the strongest
manifestation of love.
The thing with
Ryan is he doesn’t try hard like the others do. I’m most certain he prepares
mentally for his roles, but he has this absolutely nonchalant approach to his
work that adds the authentic touch to it. And yes, he does remind me of a very
dear friend of mine, Jimmy Sheirgill whom I quite simply can equate with Ryan.
Both are simple, yet towering personalities. Both have done ground-breaking
roles that many others would turn away from. Both have left, until now, their
unmistakable stamp on cinema and will go down unparalleled in the history of
the future of cinema.
Also, the ability
to let himself be himself, without any dramatics, is a rare sight today, and
that is where Ryan wins hands-down. The real test of the actor is not to
distance himself from his audience by playing characters that might go down in
history, but the real test of the character is to enrapture the audience with
the escape of a little of his soul in each of his performances that will have
history write itself around him and that is Ryan: the sovereign of confidence
and humility. The dynamo of talent no one else can ever challenge, or remotely
come close to for many years until someone equally good or better straddles
along.
Having grown up
around some of the famous names in literature and cinema, I have grown to view
the ones who are in the limelight with objectiveness, so I would have to admit
that I am not a fan of Ryan; he is a human being like any other who happens to
hog the spotlight due to the profession he has chosen, but yes, I am a fan of
Ryan’s mind, because to have the silver spoon in life, and do something about
it to make this world a better place, step-by-step, now that is something he
executes with the smoothest flamboyance, and more than anything he asks us all
if we can be soulfully naked in front of the world and be utterly unashamed of
it?
I overheard two
women talking about The Ides of March. One of them said, “That man, Ryan, he
has balls.” Quite honestly, all of us, regardless of gender have balls, and it
was rather lame of the women to observe that Ryan had balls, balls he does have
anatomically, but beyond that he has something even more precious: courage. The
courage to defy the norm and help get you or me to use the balls that god has
given us. That cleared, methinks what Ryan is doing is not self-emulation, but
a huge service to mankind. We needed people like Mahatma Gandhi or Mother
Teresa in times that understood their language. In today’s times we need people
like Ryan Gosling and Jimmy Sheirgill to talk to people in their own language.
