Lost River Review

Lost but Not Found

                Imagine if someone with a time machine traveled back to the year 2004. This is the same year the movie The Notebook hit movie theaters across the nation establishing Ryan Gosling as the symbol for every girls’, and some guys, affection for years to come. If that same man warned me that a decade into the future this newly crowned sex symbol would be responsible for the film known as Lost River, I would have laughed in his face. Unfortunately this is no fantasy, and the Gosling fanatics around the world are in for quite the shock.

                In his directorial debut Ryan Gosling attempts to use great ideas from directors such as Terrence Malick and Nicolas Winding Refn only to utterly destroy them. After a beautiful pre-credit sequence rife with imagery of dilapidated buildings intercut with snippets of the main characters placed on the backdrop of a 1960’s baled, the film begins and it all goes downhill from there.  I would attempt to give you a brief plot synopsis but in all honesty I have no idea what the film was about. I thought after a day or two to mull it over I would have a better idea of what I just watched, but after sitting and thinking about the film I am actually more confused now than I was when I walked out of the theater. It had something to do with an underwater city that is actually an amusement park with dinosaurs; also there is a curse that has to be lifted for some reason. I wish this was a joke but I could not make this stuff up if I tried. To make matters worse, the hollow plot culminates in an ending so unsatisfying and confusing that the bad taste in you have in your mouth from watching the film is exacerbated to a point in which cutting your tongue off seems like the only logical solution.

                First off, the editing rhythm is all over the place. For every smooth edit there are three or four choppy ones. I understand Gosling’s intention of creating a fragmented and dreamlike feel to his film, but some of the editing decisions made by him, and his lead editor Valdís Óskarsdóttir, are so jarring that it felt like they edited some of the scenes minutes before its premiere at Cannes. Scenes are also drowned in color treatments ranging from deep red to swampy yellow as Ryan Gosling attempts to do his best Nicolas Winding Refn impression. Shades of Only God Forgives can without a doubt be felt in Lost River.

Sound is also a major issue throughout the project. There is a point in the film where Ben Mendelsohn’s character says something along the lines of, “Can you speak up? I’m partially deaf in one ear so all I just heard was blah blah blah blah”. As a member of the audience I could not have agreed more. Dialogue is repeatedly drowned out by a musical score that teeters on the edge of being atonal. When dialogue is free from the music’s grasp there is no telling what kind of accent you will encounter. Who knows what Gosling had in mind for the geographical setting for his film, but this fictional and ambiguous land where every character has a different accent has a very different feel than its filming location of Detroit.

                Considering all the talent that was involved in making Lost River, one almost feels bad for the acting talent. Christina Hendricks does the best she can do with the material given to her while Eva Mendes is serviceable enough in her role as Cat. Saoirse Ronan and Matt Smith exemplify one of the biggest issues of the film though. They both portray characters so detached from actual human emotion that it almost seems like Ryan Gosling lives in another world entirely. A scene involving Ben Mendelsohn dancing will scar some to the point of therapy.

                “Ryan Gosling is less attractive to me now after watching this film” said a fellow female viewer as we were walking out of the theater. This sentiment was for one amusing, but it was also enlightening. People, no matter what I or others say, will see this film no matter what because Ryan Gosling’s name is attached to it. This is neither a positive nor a negative, just a fact. While I have spent the better part of 700 words bashing Lost River, there are in fact a few bright spots to point out concerning Gosling’s future as a director. The most important of which is his “eye” for certain shots. While some of his framing choices can be called into question, his ability to capture the haunting elegance of rundown Detroit should be commended. When it all comes down to it, his writing is probably where most of the blame should be aimed towards. It may serve Ryan Gosling well to use someone else’s screenplay for his next directorial outing. For now though we are left with Lost River, a film that has left me, just as the title indicates, very very lost.