This editorial is a guest post from the good people over Movie Room Reviews. Zack Mendell, the movie buff, is chief to the enthusiastic blog. Go ahead and check his blog out and find more things film related :-)
2011 was the breakout year for three of the most accomplished actors of their generation, Jessica Chastain, Michael Fassbender and Ryan Gosling. All three actors had a big year in 2011. Chastain scored an Oscar nomination for “The Help,” one of seven movies she was featured in (her best work was in the criminally underseen “Take Shelter”). She had made only two film prior to 2011. Michael Fassbender made a little more than that, but none reached a particularly large audience. Thanks to well-calculated and commandeering performances in films like “A Dangerous Method," “Shame” and “X-Men: First Class,” the actor gained much more notoriety. Ryan Gosling had more experience than the other two combined coming into the year. And yes, 2004’s “The Notebook” put him on the map already. But his diverse and stellar turns in “Crazy Stupid Love,” “Drive” and “The Ides of March” firmly established him as one of the elite actors. But cinephiles have known about the young actor’s talent for a long time. Mainstream audiences know about his turns in “The Notebook” and his more recent films. But if you look back at his filmography, you will find electrifying performances that were premonitions for his future success.
The Believer
Believe it or not, Gosling was a member of the Mickey Mouse Club, along with Christina Aguilera, Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake. In the year 2001, those three pop stars were on top of the world, unleashing one banal smash hit after another. Gosling took a different road. He starred in a shocking 2001 HBO film called “The Believer.” As a young, charismatic Nazi in modern day New York, the newcomer scorched the tube with his ferocity. But Gosling doesn’t make the turn one note, and is able to negotiate the character’s deepest secret: He himself is Jewish. The film itself is otherwise rather tedious, but Gosling’s complex and searing star turn announced to audiences that he was a young talent to keep an eye on.
Half Nelson
In 2007, Gosling received his only Oscar nomination for the film “Half Nelson.” In this Ryan Fleck masterpiece, he stars as a popular inner-city junior high school teacher with a crippling crack addiction. Many actors have the instinct to overact drug addiction, not Gosling. His subdued, subtle performance serves the film’s minimalist approach very well. He appears to have his guard up the entire movie, but the vulnerability looms over him, and Gosling is not afraid to explore the deepest, most melancholy facets of his character. Bonus points for establishing wonderful chemistry with his dynamic co-star, 13 year old non-professional Shareeka Epps, who plays the only student that knows her teacher’s secret.
Blue Valentine
Like I said, “Half Nelson” is the only Oscar nomination of Gosling’s career. However, I’m pretty sure that his shocking absence from the 2011 Best Actor lineup for his heartrending turn in “Blue Valentine” will go down as one of the Academy’s biggest blunders of the modern era. Gosling gives two performances here, one as a hopelessly romantic kid who meets the girl of his dreams in co-star Michelle Williams, the other as the same guy, but five years later and stuck in a dead end marriage with that same girl. The former turn lets Gosling turn on the charm, which he is, not surprisingly, very good at. He seduces the audience, and his co-star, with relative ease. But the latter Gosling is completely void of hope, tortured by alcoholism, and his once youthful romantic spirit has transformed into a pattern of abusive possessiveness. Each character is recognizable in the other, a true marvel. This film provided a rare opportunity for an actor with such vast emotional range to exhibit it, and Gosling does just that.
These are all heavy films, to be sure. But Gosling does have comedic talents as well, as evidenced by “Crazy Stupid Love” and “Lars and the Real Girl.” Whatever the role at hand, Gosling has demonstrated a unique talent, one that hits the silver screen far too rarely. Mainstream audiences may want to make him Ben Affleck, but what he really is is Sean Penn.
Author bio: Zack Mandell is a movie enthusiast, writer of movie reviews, and owner of www.movieroomreviews.com which has great information on actors such as Ryan Gosling. He writes extensively about the movie industry for sites such as Gossip Center, Yahoo, NowPublic, and Helium.
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