A Letter to Ryan Gosling

I am writing you for the very first time, and while I hesitate to say I am your number one fan, I believe it was the great Stephen King who single-handedly erased that line from the repertoire of appropriate openers forever, I would like to think I am at least in the top ten percent of your most devoted fans, somewhere in the middle of chasing you around the block with a camera, and giving some well thought of thumbs up after seeing a movie with you in it.

I am writing you in the very midst of the La La Land frenzy, the Globes are already handed out, and bets are being placed on this dazzling film to sweep the Oscars as well, and yes, they will be swept, and it is all good and fabulous, and yes, you are all kinds of fabulous in it as well as otherwise.

While the world is busy loving you – and the equally lovable Emma Stone, with whom you do have magical onscreen chemistry, I was talking about it with a friend after seeing La La Land, and Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan were mentioned, and that, my man, is no small mountain to climb – and celebrating the prodigious Damien Chazelle as the new almost Kubrick, I would like to take this moment to remind the world of another film, which broke my heart, moved me to my core, and leave me in tears every time I watch it, too, and is just as much a feel good movie for the dreamers, with outstanding performances, especially yours, as this new one.

That film in question is, of course, Lars and The Real Girl, by Craig Gillespie.

It was first mentioned to me by my dear old friend J., who is a film buff like myself, a Stephen King buff like myself, and living in Great Britain for years now, unlike myself. The circumstance of this film being mentioned to me by J. for the first time is vividly and distinctly memorable to me, because that was the time I almost accidentally killed her while picking her up from her home.

It was some days after Christmas, lots and lots of years ago, and she was visiting her family in our hometown. It was so long ago, we were both barely out of our twenties, and already bored to death with our families’ bickering, so we decided to go out a little, grab some dinner, discuss the crucial matters of our lives, and shoot the breeze a little, like Marty Crane would put it.

It was a carless time for me, and she, living abroad for years already, naturally had no car, either. It was decided that I ask my father if I could take his car, the huge eight-seater mentioned earlier in one of my stories, to go and fetch her. It was the countryside with fields upon fields, and one whole town, between us, despite the fact that our county is one and the same, and as a former car owner with thousands upon thousands of kilometers of experience, father happily gave me the keys to his enormous Ford.

I had driven it before, so driving automatic, and such a huge car in general, was no problem for me. Or so I thought.

I put on some music, and drove the twenty-five or so kilometers to her house. She was ready to go, so in she came and off we went. Easy breezy, so what’s new, not much, how about you, for about one minute, until I lost control of the gigantic vehicle in an easy curve, and we landed straight into a huge pile of snow, her side first, as these things unfortunately tend to go.

“Ohmygod are you alright!?” I exclaimed. “Yeah, I’m fine”, she answered. I tried to reverse the car, but we were burrowed deep in the snow bank, and the instant memory of the loss of control and the freewheeling straight into the ditch made my hands tremble, and I had to kill the engine. J. seemed incredibly calm, even when she had to wiggle herself out of the car from the driver’s side. It was darker than in the darkest place imaginable outside, with no street lights either, this was the heart of the country, and while it was a good thing the road was in infrequent use – the rear end of the car was sticking way out from the bank – it felt like we were stranded at the very edge of existence. There were no houses visible in the distance, nothing but fields of snow and darkness. “I’m glad we have a lot on”, I said, after we had informed both our parents, and called the road aid for help. “They said it might be as long as forty minutes because we are so far off the main roads.”

J.’s father was working that night, and therefore no one with a car was available for our immediate assistance, so there we stood, in the middle of winter in Finland’s sub-zero temperature, shivering in spite of our thick coats, our eyes slowly adjusting to the dark, one of us giving a futile try to move the Ford at times, waiting for the tow truck. I want to say that I was silently so grateful to J. for waiting with me that whole time in the snow and the cold, when she at any time could have easily just walked back to her house.

After what felt like a century, the tow truck arrived, and, finally out of the snow bank, realizing the car had suffered almost no damage at all because of the soft landing, we put our heads together, safely, or, relatively safe, back inside the car. “You know, after all this time outside, waiting, I am not only freezing, but also starved. There’s nothing to be done right now about the rear-view mirror.“ “I agree. Let’s just go to dinner.” “Absolutely! And the dinner is on me, because, you know, I just tried to kill you and everything.”

We drove to the town, and, quite deservingly, ordered hot chocolate and the biggest burgers and fries available. After spending all that time alone together in the darkness, the most crucial points of goings-on in our lives had already been covered, and we were now, in the warm, golden glow of the soft restaurant light, the normally annoying Mexican muzak in the background now the sounds of civilization and other people and belonging to the world of restaurants and music and eating instead of shivering and slowly freezing to death in the corner of nowhere and hell, ready to get down to business. Because we met so intermittently, there was always tons of books and films and music to cover, and it was there, inside the Mexican restaurant, over burgers and fries, recovering from a near-death experience and apologizing over and over, that I became privy to knowledge of Lars and The Real Girl for the first time.

J.’s description was to the point, and while I was a little dubious as to how strongly I myself would love a film about a guy in love with a sex-doll, I could not help but ear-mark it in my mind to find out more about later, being how I had almost just killed J. and everything, so I felt it was the least I could do. We spoke about this movie and all sorts of other stuff, and it was really late when I finally returned her to her loved ones, unharmed and without further accidents.

A month or so later, I was at my nearest DVD-rental, trying to decide on a film, and suddenly I remembered J. recommendation. I asked the clerk about it, and he produced it from the stacks effortlessly, as if he had been just waiting for someone to ask that particular movie, much in the same manner as in La La Land they have the coffee order immediately ready for the famous actress.

When Lars and The Real Girl ended, I think I cried for at least five minutes, unable to do anything else. I don’t think I texted J. in England about it, although maybe I did, because I remember a while later, on a texting spree, she told me that she hadn’t watched it herself in a long time, and maybe it was time to cry to it again.

Lars and The Real Girl is the film I always bring up, when someone tries to tell me Ryan Gosling is just another pretty face, or the it-guy of the moment, or questions anything at all about you. I have missed some of the films you have made over the years, but Lars and The Real Girl went straight to my heart, never to be removed from there, because it was such an unbelievably beautiful account on how things might be for people with head troubles, if the surrounding world just found in their hearts alternate ways of dealing with one’s distinctive type of craziness. Having gone through various kinds of head troubles myself, I find the handling of the topic not only refreshing, but extraordinary and rare. We are all more or less crazy, and should I ever find myself in a situation where I was able to choose how I would want people around me to respond to, say, a depressive, or an autistic, or a borderline personality, this is how I would just love for people to behave.

I realize it’s a fantasy, a pipe dream, just like dancing amid the stars in the observatory, but nonetheless a worthy one. Thank you, Mr. Gosling, from the bottom of my naïve heart, for being in this film. I predict you will be thanked a lot for being in this other film, La La Land, too, over and over, and while I applaud it with the rest of the world, Lars and The Real Girl will forever be my ultimate reason for loving you as much as I do.

Sincerely, Tuija

For J. If you are reading this, one more apology, and thank you.