They teamed up to great acclaim for the 2011 thriller Drive, and now Ryan Gosling and his director pal Nicolas Winding Refn are back with their latest project, Only God Forgives.
Set in Bangkok, Ryan plays Julian, a boxing club owner who is sucked back into his family’s criminal past when his brother is murdered and his tough-as-nails mother (Kristin Scott Thomas) calls upon him to avenge the death.
Canadian star Ryan, 26, met The Ticket in New York to discuss his new movie.
What attracted you to sign up for Only God Forgives?
It was really about working with Nic again. We’d had this great experience on Drive and I just felt a certain brotherhood, or something.
I couldn’t let him do the new film alone. It seemed like an experience that I wanted to have too.
You wanted to hold his hand along the way?
Yeah [laughs]. I wanted to be part of that experience because it’s not often that people make films that are so personal, even though I didn’t always understand the film or what we were doing.
I admire him enough as a filmmaker to help him realise it. It’s interesting to be close enough to watch somebody who is making something for such personal reasons.
Nicolas, when talking about this film, has admitted a fetish for violent images. Do you share that in any way?
It’s not as much a part of the fabric of my creativity as it is for Nic. I mean, he was watching Texas Chainsaw Massacre when he was a kid at school, so it’s just a part of him.
I was highly influenced by violence. When I was a kid I saw Rambo: First Blood and the next day I took knives to school and threw them at everybody!
But for me it’s been a completely new way of working. It’s a new kind of film language that I’m not really adept at.
You said you weren’t exactly sure of the kind of film you were making while on set. What kind of questions did you ask Nicolas?
Well, he shoots his films chronologically, so he’s deciding the film he wants to make as he goes along.
In Drive I was the driver, but in this film I’m more like the vehicle being driven.
So who’s driving you in this one?
I think, ultimately, it’s Nic, but I think the audience is the driver in a sense, and that my character is more like an avatar â€" a vehicle in which to experience this world and the characters in it.
And so I didn’t approach it like a regular film where you would think about the character’s back-story, or character quirks or traits.
It was much more about getting out of the way of the character and just allowing myself to be the vehicle.
It sounds as if you had to put huge amounts of trust in Nicolas?
Yeah, but I’m friends with him. I know ?his intentions when he makes a film, and ?I also want to have that kind of a relationship because I’ve been doing this for 20 years, you know?
At a certain point you have to put your trust in somebody if you want to have a different kind of experience, other than trying of hijack someone else’s vision in order to realise your own.
That’s the worst case. Sometimes you have the same vision, but in this case Nic wanted to make something that was non-verbal, and very much a mood piece that was very personal for him.
It was a challenge for me to put myself aside and just allow myself to be an organic vehicle.
But it must have been refreshing to do something so different.
Yeah. Part of it is getting in the passenger seat and letting somebody else be the focus.
I’ve had those other roles and this was a chance for me to step aside from that.
? Only God Forgives is out today.
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