Lost River (2014)

Lost River is the directorial debut of Ryan Gosling, yes that Ryan Gosling. The movie is about a single mother trying to support her two sons in what is essentially a ghost town that only has maybe at most like 10-20 people still living in it. The movie is more about style over plot though with Gosling's biggest influences being the likes Nicolas Winding Refn (Drive, Only God Forgives), Terence Malick (Tree of Life, Badlands, Days of Heaven), and David Lynch (Eraserhead, Twin Peaks) with notable references to both Lynch's Mulholland Dr. and Blue Velvet. The movie is also part tribute to the horror genre with a very interesting cabaret, and a small part played by 1960s scream queen Barbara Steele (Black Sunday, The Pit and the Pendulum). Lost River is part art house drama, part coming of age film, part horror tribute, and part fantasy, but overall you could almost call it a tone poem. While the film does have a plot that progresses and comes to a climax, overall the movie is more focused on having the viewer really feel the emotions of its characters, which it does very well. Adding to the film's style and pacing is the fact that it seemingly takes place during the hottest parts of summer in a midwestern, possibly southern town. You can hear the crickets and the toads in full song, as well as hearing songbirds chirping and dogs howling during the gorgeously captured hues of a sunset in one scene. The summer atmosphere is so well crafted you can almost smell charcoal burning in the distance. The relaxed atmosphere makes the pacing of the character's dialogue all the more relaxed, and while some may call the film slow for that reason, I think it was a stylistic choice and one I greatly enjoyed and related to because it reminded me of those terribly hot summer days where everything slows down because of the heat. Another aspect I liked about Lost River was all the footage of small town urban 

decay it shows. I grew up in a small suburb of Minneapolis and spent many of my summers in a small Wisconsin town for summer camp, so seeing all the dilapidated falling apart buildings was something very familiar to me. Growing up most of my summers were spent exploring the old parks in my town that had been falling apart since the 1980s if not earlier, watching nature grow over and start to take back a lot of the abandoned man made structures. I even explored an abandoned theater like the main protagonists do in the film, so I related to this movie on a personal level. I also found myself really enjoying the soundtrack which is also very influenced by Drive, Blue Velvet, and classic 70s horror films like Deep Red or Phantasm. The Soundtrack features a lot of the same artists as the Drive soundtrack, and similarly to Blue Velvet it picks a song that was popular in the 50s and 60s to be one of its main themes (Deep Purple), and I wouldn't be surprised if the film was originally going to be titled Deep Purple because purple is the film's most used color, from 

the sunsets to the walls of the mother's workplace. Saoirse Ronan also sings a song that's featured twice in the movie and I was overall impressed with her singing voice. The cinematography is gorgeous and I enjoyed the acting. While the movie has many influences I'd say it's probably most similar to Drive or Refn's Only God Forgives, so if you didn't like those two or any of the other influences mentioned earlier you may want to skip this one. Similarly to Drive the movie does have surprising moments of graphic violence. The movie stars Christina Hendricks (Mad Men, Drive) Saoirse Ronan (Brooklyn, Grand Budapest Hotel, Byzantium), Matt Smith (Doctor Who),  Eva Mendes (The Place Beyond the Pines, The Spirit, Hitch), and Ben Mendelson (The Dark Knight Rises, The Place Beyond the Pines). Overall I was very impressed and look forward to Ryan Gosling's next directorial effort whatever it might be. I give Lost River a 5/5. You can watch the trailer below: