With the actors we follow for a lifetime, there is always that one movie that you go back to, the one that represented the moment of discovery, when you knew as you left the theatre you wanted to know what they would do next.
For me, with Ryan Gosling, it was Half Nelson in 2006, his inner-city junior high teacher idealism clashing with his drug addiction in ways that were both incredibly complex and intimate. With Jessica Chastain, it was more recent, The Tree of Life last northern spring. A wordless moment, outside on a windy day, her arms encircling her sons, her hair whipped by the wind, her eyes staring into an unforeseeable future, strength and steel wrapped inside what felt like an unending sadness.
Chastain seems to have come out of nowhere this year to captivate us in one film after another. In addition to Tree of Life, there has been The Help and The Debt, with Take Shelter, Texas Killing Fields, Wilde Salome and Coriolanus due before year's end. For Gosling, a cinematic constant who has turned into a veritable force-field in 2011, it began with Blue Valentine spilling over from late December, then Crazy, Stupid, Love over the summer, Drive out now, followed by The Ides of March in a few weeks.
Fortune may have favoured Gosling and Chastain, who will both turn 31 in the coming months, with an unplanned confluence of performances on-screen - ones they could lose themselves in; ones so distinctive that we couldn't help but pay attention to - but it was talent, of the purer sort, that got them here.
Creatures of an increasingly rare breed, they are unconventional actors, unintentional Hollywood stars, classical in their thinking and, in the case of Chastain, who spent her college years at Juilliard, training as well.
They are actors who seem to come with complex interior lives, whatever the source. Their work is enriched and expansive without giving away all their secrets. Neither is in the tabloid business; when they're questioned on the red carpet, they tend to turn introspective, take the question seriously as if something more than a sound bite was wanted. Intelligence and elegance win out in a world dominated by cheap tricks, and you can't help but hope that will never change.
It is a range of character types so eclectic - and often in ensembles that include the likes of Brad Pitt (Chastain) and George Clooney (Gosling) - that there is little worry they will suffer the dreaded Jude Law effect. This happened in what I think of as the Alfie year, when Law appeared in six films that were a creative mixed bag, turned real life into a celebrity highlight reel, so that by the end of 2004 most of us had tired of him playing the romantic rogue - on-screen and off.
Though Gosling got his break at 12, from the new Mickey Mouse Club of all places, and Chastain came to us mostly by way of stage and Al Pacino finding her there, they specialise in highly impressionistic performances.
Chastain and Gosling each have a generous nature on-screen, existing fully within a moment, yet sharing the space with their colleagues. It makes for heartbreaking scenes. Consider Chastain as Celia in The Help, teetering on high heels and emotions as she offers friendship and a pie to Bryce Dallas Howard's Hilly, her smile dissolving with the realisation that once again she's been excluded, that she will never be invited in.
Or take Gosling in Drive - you can literally feel the intensity drain away and hopelessness overtake every move as he stares into the face of betrayal, letting us know in the frustrated shrug of his shoulders, the pacing as he talks, that despite the pain, he understands why someone so close, someone who cared, would still sell him out. By the end Gosling leaves his character, and us, spent.
The bulk of the films on Gosling's docket reteam him with the film-makers whose sensibilities have so recently influenced his performances, including Derek Cianfrance, who directed him in Blue Valentine, and Nicolas Winding Refn, who was behind the wheel in Drive.
Chastain has another Malick project in the works, a period film with The Road director John Hillcoat due in theatres early next year and a turn as a punk rocker in an indie, Mama, Andres Muschietti's feature-directing debut. Of course how things actually unfold over the years is still anyone's guess.
