If you plan on seeing what is
likely the best and most brutally honest new film of the year – Derek Cianfrance’s
robust, haunting and at times unexpectedly funny autopsy of a marriage, Blue
Valentine -- be prepared to see it more than once and by all means see it
with somebody who likes to chew it over afterwards rather than just getting
smashed and pretending that they didn’t see pieces of themselves up on the
screen.
Granted it’s a very hetero zone in
some ways, and maybe a queer friendly director – Ang Lee, John Cameron
Mitchell, Joseph Graham – will come along and frame the argument more precisely
to fit same sex couples, but then maybe not, maybe that’s our job.
By now you’ve heard the buzz about
how the crazy director – haunted by the fallout from his parents’ divorce –
spent twelve years of his life, unpaid at that, reworked his script more than
fifty times, got and lost his financing, his dream cast, finally finished the
movie only to be slapped with the commercial kiss of death, an NC-17 rating,
got that overturned and is now facing his toughest test, actual married
couples.
As the film opens Dean (Ryan
Gosling) and Cindy (Michelle Williams) are still barely talking to each other
after six years of a hard scrabble union that finds them holed up with a kid,
Frankie (the scene stealing Faith Wladyka), two dead end jobs – he’s a house
painter, she’s nurse (working for an opportunistic predator doctor boss (Ben Shenkman)
and a large dog (who’s AWOL) in that bane of the Obama campaign, Scranton,
Pennsylvania, where supposedly working folks bitterly cling to their guns.
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Blessedly Blue Valentine is
a gun free zone but the movie does swerve between a minefield of soul killing
obstacles – an alpha male abusive ex- boyfriend, a rage-prone dad, an unwanted
pregnancy, a precarious moment of truth atop the Brooklyn Bridge – but
ultimately Dean and Cindy’s worst enemies are the people they’ve become six
years in. He’s losing his hair, has grown a grotesquely bad mustache to
compensate, plus he drinks and lacks any visible ambition. She’s put on some
pounds, sulks, seems to resent the kid and is obviously looking for an excuse
to pack it in. That excuse arrives unexpectedly when the dog turns up dead by
the roadside and Dean proposes they get their marriage bed mojo back at an
X-rated motel, whose unbelievably funky ambience inspires the title. Entering
the windowless motel suite – which Dean aptly compares to a “robot’s vagina,” –
everything that could go wrong does and after the failure of shower sex, Dean
and Cindy find themselves engaging in the thing they dread most: a meaningful
chat about their future, which Cindy kicks off by needling Dean about his lack
of ambition.
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“You’re so good at so many things,
isn’t there something else you want to do?’
“In your like dream scenario of me
doing what I’m good at what would that be?”
“You have such capacity. You can
sing, you can draw -- you can (laughs) dance.”
“Listen, I didn’t want to be
somebody’s husband, and I didn’t want to be somebody’s dad, that wasn’t my goal
in life. Some guys it is, it wasn’t mine. But somehow it was what I wanted. And
it’s all I want to do, I work so I can do that.”
“I’d like to see you have a job
where you didn’t to start drinking at eight o’clock in the morning.”
“I have a job where I can drink at 8 o’clock in the morning. What a luxury. I get up, I have a beer, I go to work, I paint
somebody’s house, they’re excited about it, I come home, I get to be with you –
this is the dream!”
“You have all this potential.”
“Why do you fucking have to make
money off your potential?”
“Can we ever sit down and have an
adult conversation, because every time we do you take something I say and turn
it around into something I didn’t mean. You just twist it.”
“If you’re not interested in any
thing I’ve got to say then maybe I just shouldn’t say anything.”
“I’d like to see you think about
what you’re saying instead of saying what you think all the time – good luck. (feigns
punching)
“You want to fight me?”
“Yeah, I want to fight you.”
Observant cinema buffs will, of
course, recognize buried metaphors and jokes about actors doing their best work
virtually for free, but
like the great John Cassavetes’ directed husband/wife knock
down, drag outs with partners going twelve rounds, with bruises but no
resolution to their woes, Dean and Cindy’s last bid to save their marriage is
mostly for our benefit. We sense this relationship is headed for the dustbin of
history.
Blue Valentine is most
fun in the flashback moments when a thinner, still hopeful couple are still
feeling each other out – there’s glorious moment when Dean and Cindy surprise
each other with their “special talents” – his silly take on Tiny Tim wailing
“You only hurt the one you love,” is accompanied by her “this is not dancing
for the stars,” stab at tap. The couple is at their silliest, most vulnerable
and it is here that the boy who got his big break on The Mickey Mouse Club, and
the ballsy blonde from Dawson’s Creek steal our hearts. It’s a rare
treat to see two young pros who are so good at feigning failure at the one life
project where most of us fall short with a good deal less grace.