Ryan Gosling's controversial crime drama Only God Forgives is dividing the film community after it has been screened at various international film festivals, especially at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival where the audience booed the movie.

This is the second time that Gosling and director Nicolas Winding Refn worked together following 2011's Drive, which most critics hailed as one of the best movies of that year. Only God Forgives recently won the Sydney International Film Festival's highest honour.

From being praised to getting flakked, how do Gosling and Refn manage to handle this kind of varied and intense reactions from the audience?

Refn stated in an interview with the Huffington Post: "When people love or hate your films, it's the only time you've actually penetrated. That was like the whole point of making films: you're meant to react to it.

"If everybody likes it - which, of course, is great - it's the same thing as everybody hating it. Of course it's more pleasurable if everybody likes it - because being degraded and hated by everyone is a terrible emotion - but it's the same flip. It only becomes interesting if people love it or hate it for the same reason."

Gosling, on the other hand, has been taking the response from the film as like being drugged. "You either have a good trip or a bad trip," he said.

The actor described the movie to be "very extreme" and "more of a nightmare than a dream". He does not exactly share Refn's fetish for violent images but he 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. So I was definitely influenced by violent films before "Drive." 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."

Aside from Only God Forgives, Gosling's The Place Beyond the Pines, also a crime drama directed by Derek Cianfrance, topped Indiewire's running list of 30 highest grossing indie films of 2013 with current earnings of $21,403,519.

Moreover, the actor is not about to rest on his laurels as he has an upcoming movie directed by Terence Malick. The untitled film also stars Rooney Mara, Michael Fassbender, Cate Blanchett, Natalie Portman, Val Kilmer and musicians Patti Smith, Robert Plant, Johnny Rotten and the Black Lips.

Gosling's directorial debut for How To Catch A Monster starring Mad Men actress Christina Hendricks and Saoirse Ronan will be released in 2014.

Only God Forgives opens in Australia on July 18.

Also read:

Ryan Gosling's "Only God Forgives" Wins Top Sydney Film Prize; Movie Gets New Trailer

Also read IBTimes Australia's articles on the controversial films of 2013:

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