For all the attention his triceps get, and it’s a disturbing amount of attention, it’s his work in really good movies that earns Ryan Gosling the majority of adoration he is currently receiving. Gaining a large amount of acclaim for The Believer back in 2001, he really took critical flight with Half Nelson in 2006, pretty much cementing his status as an actor of the highest level, and one of the most promising talents of his generation. And since then, he has far more hits than misses, going from Lars and the Real Girl, Blue Valentine, Crazy, Stupid, Love, Drive, and The Place Beyond the Pines. That’s an impressive track record over just 7 years of work. And those abs, am I right?
I would love it if I could simply watch the movies I watch, distinguish one performer from the next, but only invest in the characters they play and not conflate the characters with the performers themselves. Maybe some people are able to do this. I envy them. I’m perhaps more jealous of these hypothetical people than I am of Ryan Gosling. If you’re one of them please share your secrets with me. But movies work on the majority of us in powerful, involuntary ways, and so the connection people have with celebrities like Gosling is completely understandable and, within reason, perfectly healthy. It’s natural. It’s a vice we might as well embrace, or at least laugh about. Because if there’s one thing this generation could be defined by, it’s the ability to handle things with a healthy contradictory mix of irony and earnestness, hey? Girl?
