The golden age of Ryan Gosling is upon us

IN DEREK CIANFRANCE'S 2010 LOVE-ON-THErocks heartbreaker Blue Valentine, Ryan Gosling plays a husband and father, Dean, who appears to be nothing but an annoyance to his wife, Michelle Williams' Cindy, a harried nurse.

- STEPHANIE ZACHAREK

She hustles to get their young daughter out the door to school, even as Dean, relishing the role of the fun dad, turns breakfast into a game. "Let's eat like leopards!" he suggests, dotting the kitchen table with raisins plucked from his daughter's oatmeal bowl, which the two lap up with jungle-animal gusto. In a flashback we see a younger Dean who, in his job as a mover, has been charged with unpacking the belongings of a frail, elderly man who's just been consigned to a nursing home. He removes plates, pictures, knickknacks from their wrapping with casual tenderness, aware that each item bears the fingerprints of a life. Plenty of gifted actorsJack Nicholson, AI Pacino, Paul Newman-have cited Marlon Brando as an inspiration and an influence. But in the realm of the happenstance gesture-the absent-minded tug of a shirt collar, maybe, or a glance so fleeting the camera could almost miss it-Gosling may be Brando's truest heir. The work he puts into his characters is translucent, evanescent; the result is a firefly flicker you feel lucky to catch.