After playing a talented jazz pianist in last year’s Oscar-winning musical La La Land, Ryan Gosling returns to the keyboard — albeit a much smaller one — in Terrence Malick’s new film, Song to Song. In this exclusive video clip from the movie, which opens in New York and Los Angeles on March 17, Gosling plays a Casio keyboard while singing Bob Marley and The Wailers’ “It Hurts to Be Alone” with Swedish indie-pop singer-songwriter Lykke Li.
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Li, making her film debut, plays one of Gosling’s lovers in the film, which is set against the music scene of Austin, Texas — where Song to Song also recently premiered, on the opening night of the SXSW Film Festival (Mar. 10) — and depicts the intertwined lives of four characters: BV (Gosling), an up-and-coming star songwriter; Faye (Rooney Mara), an aspiring songwriter; Cook (Michael Fassbender), a successful and hard-partying music producer; and Rhonda (Natalie Portman) a struggling waitress who becomes Cook’s wife.
Malick, who directed the visually stunning ’70s film classics Badlands and Days of Heaven, and who was nominated for best director Oscars for The Thin Red Line (1999) and The Tree of Life (2012), shot a number of the movie’s scenes at Austin music festivals. To up the authenticity quotient, Song to Song also includes cameo appearances by Patti Smith, Iggy Pop, John Lydon, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Black Lips and other real-life rock acts. It is Malick’s ninth feature film.