The protagonist of Ryan Gosling's self-written and directed debut novel "The Misty River" is a group of "nail households" stationed in a shanty town in a decadent small town in the United States. The film presents a visual and sensory enjoyment to the audience, from which some real talents can be seen. It's just that this seems to be a movie filmed in David Lynch's model, and every frame of the picture releases a deep breath of reference.
In addition to the obvious influence of Lynch, it is not difficult to see the shadows of other directors in the film: Terrence Malick ("The Tree of Life"), Nicholas Winding-Refin (and Gauss Lin has worked with "Desperate Driving" and "Only God Can Forgive"), and Gaspar-Nau ("Irrevocable"), and the photographer of this film is the French Queen Benoit-Derby. Like Lynch and No, the characters in Gosling’s script have unknown origins. They live in a disturbing world. They enter a dazzling, chaotic, dreamlike, supernatural world that is not restricted by traditional rules and social customs. real world.
Among the few remaining residents in a residential area with no scenery (surprisingly filmed in Detroit), there lived single mother Billy (Christina Hendricks) and her handsome eldest son "Bone". And cute little son Frankie. Billy has a hard life and has no stable income, but she doesn't want to give up the house where she grew up. The life of the family is almost undisturbed, except for a nearby lunatic named "Bullie" (Matt Smith) who drove a dilapidated Cadillac all day long and yelled everywhere.
Billy wanted to find a high-paying job. She went to a casino-style nightclub run by the arrogant and rich Dave (Ben Mendelson) and joined a bloody performance team, and Eva Mendes The "cat" played is also one of them. "Bone" fell in love with the neighbor's girl "Mouse" (played by Saoirse Ronan), who lived with his deaf grandmother (played by Italian horror film actor Barbara Steele), the old man Every day I watch home videos of myself and my late husband at home.
At the same time, the gangster team of "Bullies" focused on "Bone", who once ran through a forest and came to a pool located above a submerged city. There are also two plots that are not fully explained in the film. One is that the "rat" is surrounded by the "bully", and the other is that Dave wants to attack Billy, but obviously, instead of explaining the ins and outs, Gosling is playing with each other. The symbolic images of fire and water are more interesting.
The visual effects of the film are very dreamy, but it seems that it basically borrowed the dreams of other directors. The unbalanced, interlaced world in the whole film is reminiscent of Lynch's "Twin Peaks", full of random, symbolic, and surreal images. Most of them point to ruins and decay, as if a group of ghosts occupy both the abandoned homeland and the underwater world in the film.
Despite the beauty of the lens, the heavy traces of reference make this movie difficult to impress. The magnificence of "The Misty River" is enough to attract the eye, but the experience of watching the movie is like looking through a manual of art photography that gathers the works of many artists. The soundtrack of the film is equally diverse.
Gosling has shown some talent through this debut work. If there is another time, I hope he can find someone to polish the script together, forget the directors he admires most, and choose a narrative style that matches the theme.
View more about Lost River reviews
