Most of us will be lucky enough to experience true love at some point in our lives, and many of us who do will unfortunately experience its death. No two more divergent feelings can come from the same emotion as love, and those divergent feelings, along with the joyful/enraged outbursts they can bring out in a person, are perfectly encapsulated in Derek Cianfrance's Blue Valentine. This is a story that shows us both the formative and faltering days of an intense love between two people you come to know intimately through the magnificent performances of its two leads, Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams, and the realistic, melodrama-free writing and direction of Cianfrance.
We initially meet Gosling's Dean and Williams' Cindy six years into their marriage. They have a daughter they both adore, but elsewhere their relationship has forked in opposing directions. Dean is a freewheeling man-child, satisfied with his work as a house painter and the time it affords him to spend at home--not to mention the frequent opportunities for early morning drinking it provides. Cindy, more mature and career-focused, works as a nurse at a private practice, and tries to juggle her hectic work schedule with her family's day-to-day domestic needs. The tension between the two of them seems more apparent to Cindy, as Dean's care-free attitude obfuscates the harsher realities of their life together.
You couldn't be faulted for wondering how two so seemingly ill-suited people might've fallen for each other, and how that film answers that question is its real stroke of genius. The move vaults back in time to show the days leading up to their eventual meet-cute. It shows us a handsomer, more hipsterish Dean, working as a mover in Brooklyn, and a more naive, perhaps sweeter Cindy, mired in her schoolwork on the way to becoming a doctor, her deeply troubled relationship with her parents, and her awkward sexual relationship with a classmate. She takes the off spare moment to spend with her ailing grandmother at her nursing home, and it is there, in the sort of random encounter that many people have, but few ever stop to think about, that she meets the aggressively smiley and chatty Dean.
There are few things more uncomfortable than witnessing a catastrophic fight between a couple, especially a couple you're familiar and friendly with. Blue Valentine elicits that same feeling of discomfort as it winds back and forth in time, teaching us how these two came to know and love each other so deeply, and then showing us how it all comes so terribly unfurled.
Cianfrance pulls few punches, and elects to avoid making either character "the bad guy" in the situation. Dean's capriciousness and drinking habits certainly lead to more trouble than anyone ought to have to endure, and his unwillingness to evolve beyond his current station in life, even for Cindy's sake, is rooted in a deep selfishness. Yet, his heartfelt love for both his wife and child are never in question, even if he can't seem to show it to Cindy in a way that actually makes her happy anymore. Similarly, Cindy is not some icy bitch, looking for a way out in light of something better coming along. Williams shows us a woman who has simply been worn to a frayed edge by the stresses of her life, Dean's sometimes antagonistic personality, and the realization that her husband is still the same impulsive boy she first met all those years ago.
That Gosling and Williams are so good together makes the story all the more heartwarming and devastating. Gosling gives Dean such charm and humor that it's immediately easy to see why Cindy's initial resistance to him would eventually melt away. Williams gives a layered, fearless performance that shows why she's one of the best actresses of our generation. Her character is written with broader strokes than Dean's, but she digs deep to give us more of Cindy than was perhaps on paper. Of that much spoken about sex scene between them--the one that earned the film its temporary, and deeply undeserved NC-17 rating--I will only say that with lesser actors, it would have never gotten that rating, because with lesser actors, it wouldn't have had nearly the disquieting impact that it does here.
Cianfrance deserves credit for giving these actors room to work. He tells this story in long takes, filled with dialogue that feels genuine. Some of it feels improvised, but rarely is it aimless. Every weird joke she tells him, every goofy song he sings her, every hopeful look they give each other early on is like a knife in the heart, knowing the hell that awaits them later in life.
Brilliant as it is, Blue Valentine will prove a tough watch for many. It's a relentlessly sad movie played with such realism that anyone who has ever experienced a tough relationship will be hard-pressed not to take it a bit personally. But that appears to be very much Cianfrance's point, to give a wrenching and unfiltered depiction of the end of a relationship we don't want to see end. It is a testament to his filmmaking, and the talents of his performers, that Blue Valentine is so remarkably successful in that goal.
We initially meet Gosling's Dean and Williams' Cindy six years into their marriage. They have a daughter they both adore, but elsewhere their relationship has forked in opposing directions. Dean is a freewheeling man-child, satisfied with his work as a house painter and the time it affords him to spend at home--not to mention the frequent opportunities for early morning drinking it provides. Cindy, more mature and career-focused, works as a nurse at a private practice, and tries to juggle her hectic work schedule with her family's day-to-day domestic needs. The tension between the two of them seems more apparent to Cindy, as Dean's care-free attitude obfuscates the harsher realities of their life together.
There are few things more uncomfortable than witnessing a catastrophic fight between a couple, especially a couple you're familiar and friendly with. Blue Valentine elicits that same feeling of discomfort as it winds back and forth in time, teaching us how these two came to know and love each other so deeply, and then showing us how it all comes so terribly unfurled.
Cianfrance pulls few punches, and elects to avoid making either character "the bad guy" in the situation. Dean's capriciousness and drinking habits certainly lead to more trouble than anyone ought to have to endure, and his unwillingness to evolve beyond his current station in life, even for Cindy's sake, is rooted in a deep selfishness. Yet, his heartfelt love for both his wife and child are never in question, even if he can't seem to show it to Cindy in a way that actually makes her happy anymore. Similarly, Cindy is not some icy bitch, looking for a way out in light of something better coming along. Williams shows us a woman who has simply been worn to a frayed edge by the stresses of her life, Dean's sometimes antagonistic personality, and the realization that her husband is still the same impulsive boy she first met all those years ago.
Cianfrance deserves credit for giving these actors room to work. He tells this story in long takes, filled with dialogue that feels genuine. Some of it feels improvised, but rarely is it aimless. Every weird joke she tells him, every goofy song he sings her, every hopeful look they give each other early on is like a knife in the heart, knowing the hell that awaits them later in life.
Brilliant as it is, Blue Valentine will prove a tough watch for many. It's a relentlessly sad movie played with such realism that anyone who has ever experienced a tough relationship will be hard-pressed not to take it a bit personally. But that appears to be very much Cianfrance's point, to give a wrenching and unfiltered depiction of the end of a relationship we don't want to see end. It is a testament to his filmmaking, and the talents of his performers, that Blue Valentine is so remarkably successful in that goal.
