Ladies, Noah from the Notebook is in revolt. Like post-Cry-Baby Depp, Ryan Gosling refuses to slot into the pretty-boy pigeonhole. He’s struggling to shake off the 50’s heartthrob vibe, resonant of Dean and Brando, while straight women across the world wait with dread for his inevitable statement film; his venture into the unsexy; his devoted commitment to obesity or his desire to play a creepy outcast with scissors for hands...
So enjoy it while you can and worry not - he is still painfully sexy in Drive.
It’s a smart film, in which Gosling’s quiet solemnity is a parody of all chiseled frontmen. Every aspect of the film is shrewdly selected and stylised with the 80’s in mind. The pink font used for the opening credits glares at you in preparation for scenes that lionise the bomber jacket and resemble an A-ha music video (and I hope you like synth-heavy pop). The whole thing reads like an homage to the car chase, a staple ingredient in 80’s action.
Amid a cultural “born in the 80’s” resurrection, Drive is current and slick, the latter quality achieved in very few words. You see, when someone asks me a question and I pause for a sustained length of time, people think I’m slow. When Gosling does the same as the unnamed driver, he pulls it off entirely. There’s no way he’s thinking about something as banal as the pizza he had for lunch. His portrayal as a quiet working class babe says: I’ve got a novel inside me but I’m just not ready for talk. This equates to awesome street cred, both in the film and externally as an actor who seems to be everywhere at the moment.
Crawl back under your rock if all this rugged perfection grates your nerves. Or join us and enter the Golden Age of silence and Gosling.
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