The Place Beyond the Pines (2012)

USA
4*

Director:
Derek Cianfrance
Screenwriters:
Derek Cianfrance
Ben Coccio
Darius Marder
Director of Photography:
Sean Bobbitt

Running time: 140 minutes

Derek Cianfrance is the unsung hero of contemporary cinema. Despite the grim and outright pessimistic perspective on relationships that he made so visible in his 2010 film Blue Valentine, in which a young man and woman constantly fight, bicker and make up, only to crush each other again — and the viewer, too — his films very realistically accentuate something very few others can boast of: the dark side of love.

The Place Beyond the Pines is a departure from his previous film in the sense that it doesn’t focus narrowly on the ups and many downs of a relationship but rather takes the consequences of fathers’ actions and project them over a generation to examine what happens down the line, although the director has much more interest in the drama of life than in any religious interpretation the viewer may bring to it.

The result, as is to be expected with Cianfrance, is not pretty, and yet life, though always complicated, is not without hope. There is a chance for characters to redeem themselves, but there is a big caveat: provided that other people don’t bring them down in the process. There are no guardian angels here, and even the actions that seem to spark a temporary reprieve for someone in dire need are usually motivated by the so-called protector’s selfish need for self-protection.

In this film, Cianfrance teams up with noted director of photography Sean Bobbitt, who has a background in documentary work (as does the director) and worked with Michael Winterbottom on the marvellous depiction of domestic turmoil in the underrated 1998 film Wonderland.

The collaboration produces a very gritty representation of life that includes drugs and violence. But these are merely props in a story that runs much deeper.

The film tells the story of Luke Glanton (Ryan Gosling) who earns the bare minimum riding a motorcycle inside a steel “globe of death,” and when he learns he has a son he drops everything to commit his life to being a good father. However, he is stubborn and aggressive and behaves like a real miscreant towards the man whose life he is making miserable: Kofi, the stepfather of his son. Kofi turns out to be one of the most interesting characters in the film, and he is portrayed with a quiet sense of dignity and fatherly love for a child who is not his own by actor Mahershala Ali.

Events transpire that lead to a confrontation with rookie police officer Avery Cross (Bradley Cooper), who is about to lose his naiveté about life as a policeman. His actions, as well as those of Glanton, will follow him for years to come and impact his relationship with his son.

The film is set in upstate New York, in the town of Schenectady, which is the approximate Mohawk translation of the film’s title. However, this factoid doesn’t feature anywhere in the story, which will certainly animate many post-screenings discussions at the bar (because, yes, you probably will need a drink after this film).

As we saw in the gorgeous but disturbing Little Children, the green foliage of New England towns can hide terrible secrets (of course, American Beauty had the same message), and The Place Beyond the Pines also seeks to pull the curtain back ever so slightly on the goings-on in the small town where its story takes place. Corruption, drugs and violence are just a few of the issues that the film raises, and they don’t even come close to the emotional violence done to us by these fictional characters.

As bookends, the opening and the closing shot are as magnificent as their meaning seems to be just out of reach. The opening Steadicam shot will make the viewer think of GoodFellas and its famous Copacabana tracking shot through the kitchen as we follow Ray Liotta (who also appears in this film) deeper and deeper into a place where he wields great influence. In Cianfrance’s film, it’s Gosling whose back is turned to the camera as he walks shirtless and supremely confidently through an amusement park in a shot that lasts nearly three and a half minutes from beginning to end; he is serene despite the wild sounds all around him as he heads towards the abovementioned “globe of death”, where — in a seemingly unbroken take — he will mount his motorcycle and perform the deadly stunt for a raucous crowd.

The film’s closing shot shows this same character’s son, many years later, taking up a motorcycle and driving off into the distance, this time across a peaceful autumn landscape that in no way represents his inner turmoil. Where he is headed we do not know (very likely he doesn’t know, either), and it would be incredibly simplistic and presumptuous to assume this scene neatly slots in with the events of the opening shot, but there is an unspoken hint of filiality between the two, and tenuous as the connection may be, we get a feeling of cohesion that is simply gorgeous.

Cianfrance’s films may be bleak, but his work proves the ever greater richness and complexity of life, and he should get more credit as a storyteller and a documenter of human emotion.