I wasn't able to catch the end of this film which, I gather, didn't provide much of an explanation for this "based on a true story" production anyway.
Still, I found the first hour or more fairly impressive in several respects. I was happy to see that Ryan Gosling was no longer an obnoxious, cocky youth but rather a deeply troubled man whose idea of escaping a turbulent life in New York is to move away and disguise himself as a woman. For the first time, Gosling appears to be actually acting. He's reserved, taciturn, and filled with conflicts.
He's a nice Jewish boy from a powerful New York family, led by the superb Frank Langella. And he marries this cute, smart, ambitious shiksa who loves him to death but wants to be more than just a trophy blond -- a mother and a doctor, in fact. Nice performance here from Kirsten Dunst too.
Gosling and Dunst marry against the old man's wishes and open a health store in Vermont, which fails. Then Gosling is slowly drawn back into the family real estate business, against Dunst's wishes. I kept thinking that, if this were an Italian family instead of a Jewish one, and if the business were extortion instead of real estate, you'd be talking "The Godfather." Even the Mayor of New York and Senator Daniel P. Moynihan seem to be under Langella's thumb.
The first half of what I watched is better than the second half. The initial scenes are shot in daylight and are bright with promise. As the movie progresses, it deteriorates into another "woman in jeopardy" movie. Gosling, we gather, slaps her around and beats her up. Why doesn't he want to satisfy her ordinary bourgeois desires for "building a home" and "self actualization"? The script gives him a Hollywood reason: he watch his mother jump off a roof when he was a child. The psychodynamic links are unclear.
The story also gets darker in a literal sense. People have important conversations in rooms at night and they don't turn on the lights. At times you can barely make out their faces. This photographic fad has become a genuine nuisance. I'm inclined to pin the problem on "The X Files." It's turned into a kind of irritating itch that you can't get rid of. There is another cliché that I hope never to see on screen again as long as I live, which, if the device continues to appear with its current regularity, won't be long. After a quick cut from a quiet scene, Gosling thrusts his face into the camera and ululates like a wounded pig. Usually, such a shot signals the end of a nightmarish dream. Here, it's part of some primal scream therapy that Gosling is undergoing.
Not a perfect film, but the acting on everyone's part is superior to the usual junk. Good enough, anyway, to make me wish I'd been able to see the end.
Still, I found the first hour or more fairly impressive in several respects. I was happy to see that Ryan Gosling was no longer an obnoxious, cocky youth but rather a deeply troubled man whose idea of escaping a turbulent life in New York is to move away and disguise himself as a woman. For the first time, Gosling appears to be actually acting. He's reserved, taciturn, and filled with conflicts.
He's a nice Jewish boy from a powerful New York family, led by the superb Frank Langella. And he marries this cute, smart, ambitious shiksa who loves him to death but wants to be more than just a trophy blond -- a mother and a doctor, in fact. Nice performance here from Kirsten Dunst too.
Gosling and Dunst marry against the old man's wishes and open a health store in Vermont, which fails. Then Gosling is slowly drawn back into the family real estate business, against Dunst's wishes. I kept thinking that, if this were an Italian family instead of a Jewish one, and if the business were extortion instead of real estate, you'd be talking "The Godfather." Even the Mayor of New York and Senator Daniel P. Moynihan seem to be under Langella's thumb.
The first half of what I watched is better than the second half. The initial scenes are shot in daylight and are bright with promise. As the movie progresses, it deteriorates into another "woman in jeopardy" movie. Gosling, we gather, slaps her around and beats her up. Why doesn't he want to satisfy her ordinary bourgeois desires for "building a home" and "self actualization"? The script gives him a Hollywood reason: he watch his mother jump off a roof when he was a child. The psychodynamic links are unclear.
The story also gets darker in a literal sense. People have important conversations in rooms at night and they don't turn on the lights. At times you can barely make out their faces. This photographic fad has become a genuine nuisance. I'm inclined to pin the problem on "The X Files." It's turned into a kind of irritating itch that you can't get rid of. There is another cliché that I hope never to see on screen again as long as I live, which, if the device continues to appear with its current regularity, won't be long. After a quick cut from a quiet scene, Gosling thrusts his face into the camera and ululates like a wounded pig. Usually, such a shot signals the end of a nightmarish dream. Here, it's part of some primal scream therapy that Gosling is undergoing.
Not a perfect film, but the acting on everyone's part is superior to the usual junk. Good enough, anyway, to make me wish I'd been able to see the end.