REVIEW: Lost River

Lost River is the product of Ryan Gosling’s cinematic relationship with the Danish maverick, Nicolaus Winding Refn. After several powerful, affecting films (Pusher, Bronson, and Valhalla Rising), Refn’s director-actor courtship with Gosling has turned into a dreamy, post-modern expressionism, apparent in his wildly overrated, hollow offerings Drive and Only God Forgives.

Gosling’s debut is a direct response; an ultra-stylised drama, where magical realism meets post-apocalyptic Detroit. These overt styling and pastiches, pioneered by Tarantino, are emblematic of our contemporary cultural condition. Style isn’t just valued over substance, it supplants it. The attenuation of attention ushers in superficial referencing as the preeminent value.

In a deliriously roughshod manner, Lost River charters the lives of little people embroiled in the tumult of a ravaged city. Gosling’s hermetic world cries out for meaningful dialogue and bold political subtext, but the script circumvents intelligible critique. Unfortunately, Lost River descends into aggressive plagiarism; Gosling, as a fledgling director has a penchant for Lynchian imagery and locations (Mullholland Drive especially), grossly evident throughout.

Unlike Gosling, Lynch’s surrealism doesn’t curb depth or meaning. Since his debut feature, Eraserhead, the bizarre, dream-like elements of the Lynchian rubric are clearly rooted in real-world, psychological anxieties. Eraserhead – one of Lynch’s most unconventional films – is packed with socio-psychological commentary on urban-industrial living and familial anxiety. His filmography is a Freudian smorgasbord of desire, rage, identity-loss and familial conflict.

To Gosling’s credit, Lost River is visually compelling and boasts dense, dioramic locations and razor attention to lighting. The opening sequence is particularly impressive. Shots of cavernous buildings and lush vegetation segue into free floating camera work and epileptic editing; its characters roam toward and away from the camera, evoking the transcendental aura of Terrence Malik’s Tree of Life.

If it wasn’t all so derivative, Gosling’s flair for the visual, which is so acute it borders on cinematic synaesthesia, might salvage the film as an ‘art piece’. He captures the haunting vacancy of Detroit well, contrasting soft and hard focus, with the camera panning and tilting, accentuating the film’s atmosphere. Lost River verges on southern gothic, but lacks the story to complement its visual delights. The choice of soundtrack is middling and unoriginal; mixing Dario Argento-like creepiness with Drive’s soft pop, electro score. In terms of acting, performances range in quality. Actors that perform well (Eva Mendes) should be commended due to the script’s paucity.

Somewhere lurking under Gosling’s post-modern aesthetic is an uncommitted socio-political commentary on poverty and exploitation. It’s likely Gosling lacks the confidence as a writer to expand beyond this coy, fuzzy engagement. For a debut, the film is half-baked but not catastrophic. At the very least Lost River manages to create a vibrant world, albeit a discordant and maudlin one. With a quality writer in tow, Gosling might very well disentangle from the sky fortress of latte-sipping nihilism he and Refn have grown all too accustomed to.