It has become a trademark of the Ryan Gosling acting style, almost to the point where it’s a cliché: the silence. He has a gaze that draws us in like no other. His face itself is not all that interesting on its own, not overly expressive, not weird or captivating, but he has earned our attention by using it so effectively, with the subtlest gestures and perhaps the most understated intensity the screen has ever seen. He doesn’t have the big dark eyes of someone like Johnny Depp that capture your glance immediately and make you wait to see what they’re going to do; eyes like his or Helena Bonham Carter seem to naturally (it’s probably the result of training and endless work, sure) give you the impression that there’s so much going on behind them.
Gosling has the unique ability to give off that sense of underlying complexity without seeming to even do anything, without even moving an eye muscle. Maybe it’s the way he fixes his eyes on something with such focus that tells us the thing he’s looking at is interesting; we trust his ocular reliability. There’s also something fascinating about the way he looks when he’s staring at something or somebody—as if he’s highly conscious of the fact that he’s being looked at. I don’t know what it is. It’s a mystery. He’s mysterious that way. We always want to know more. That’s all part of the allure. The bastard.
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