This is an incredible film. What the hell were critics thinking trashing this? How could audience members walk out of this when it debuted at festivals? Were they seeing a different film? It boggles the mind.
Honestly, I’ll probably have Lost River in my top 10 best films of this year. That’s high praise but it’s totally deserved. This is Ryan Gosling’s directing & writing debut and it’s stunning. The acting is so intense, so unique, each scene has a gripping nature to it as you watch the actors become these strange characters. The cinematography is beautiful with gorgeous use of colors, neon & natural light, heartbreaking shots that capture emotion just in their composition, and some of the best framing I’ve seen this year.
The whole film is thematically structured and deeply symbolic. Maybe that’s why so many critics didn’t get it. There’s intriguing parallels to the horrible state of the U.S. economy, the housing collapse, low income family dynamics, coming of age loss of innocence, the confusing and terrifying nature of true evil, America’s obsession with violence, and much more. The film is bursting with imagery and symbolic interpretation. If you like films by Lynch, Cronenberg, and Refn, you need to check this out. Lost River is an astonishing debut film.