It took a second viewing for me to fully appreciate what Derek Cianfrance, who made his directorial debut with the acclaimed film, Blue Valentine, has done with his follow-up, The Place Beyond the Pines.
I will firstly qualify this review and say that I score it highly not because it is perfect; no, far from it. It is not fully calibrated, and its high ambitions are not truly realized, but it is an admirable attempt and for that I give it credit. To drop its score based on its flaws would be denying the scenes, performances, and aesthetics that do make it a special kind of movie that only Cianfrance could make.
Critics would agree– a good story is one where the inner framework is all but invisible; when the structure of a story is immediately discernible, it is inevitably a formula. However, The Place Beyond the Pines’s visible structure is precisely the film’s modus operandi. Because it is a triptych, it tempts viewers, perhaps even traps them, into thinking that they should be able to decipher a grand statement and universal insight on fathers and sons, as the conclusion of a sweeping tragedy would have. Unfortunately, it falls short of this: Cianfrance is not able to give us a universal truth on fatherhood; intentionally so, I believe.
Its emulation of the form of a three-act Greek Tragedy becomes both its strongest and weakest attribute. And so despite its wonderfully climactic ambitions, the form means that we can calculate the trajectory Cianfrance hopes to reach and in that, see the puppeteer holding the strings– one contrivance after another. Personally, I don’t take too much issue with these self-conscious set-ups because I believe in its exposition and eagerly await as the characters embark on what is inevitably a momentous and fierce collision course.
Cianfrance’s film overstays its welcome for about twenty minutes, although those twenty minutes are from the belly-flopping second act of the film. The second act suffers by abruptly bringing viewers down from the intensity and forceful desperation that make Handsome Luke’s story from Act I so compelling. As the film continues, the story of Avery Cross’s moral grapplings is unable to escape the shadow of Ryan Gosling’s depiction of Luke in the first and most dynamic part of the film. It leaves us feeling that Avery Cross’s struggle in a corrupt workplace is a superfluous segue, delving into an inconsequential quagmire. There might’ve been much simpler way to turn Avery Cross into what he becomes in the third part of the movie: a man who tries to overcome the guilt that plagues him by discarding his son, swinging high, and disregarding the collateral damage he leaves behind.
Third Act. Enter Emory Cohen and Dane DeHaan, portraying Avery Jr. and Jason, respectively. A.J., who happens to transfer to Jason’s school, is drawn to him immediately. This is another point where Cianfrance momentarily veers off the path of the movie’s insofar relatively believable story. Again, there is an obvious set-up. Whether one can forgive Cianfrance for this forced plot point is up to the viewer; I did because I needed the viewer’s satisfaction that comes from such a confrontation after the immense build-up from the two previous acts.
Aside from some of the failings of the plot, I am completely engrossed by the aesthetics of the film.With a title derived from the city where the story takes place, you can expect Pines to be setting, setting, setting. Cianfrance cultivates Schenectady perfectly– through cinematography (Sean Bobbit), he has nursed it into becoming its own stanza in this poetic three-act play. Handheld cameras and close-ups– stylistically similar to the camera work seen in his first feature. Small details (Jason eating ice cream with his stepfather– reminding us of Luke’s desire to be remembered) become heart-wrenching. As with Blue Valentine, the score is mesmerizing and rings in your ears during captivating scenes that will stay with you long after you’ve left the theater. Slow melancholy tunes accompany long shots where Dane DeHaan and Ryan Gosling ride the same roads, fifteen years apart. Scenes and music will echo, literally, always recalling a previous scene.
As we draw the parallels in time, and thus, between Jason and Luke, we are again prompted to search for some wand of truth, but the film is more complex than the tried and simple theme of the sins-of-our-fathers. Jason, the misfit, victim to the alienation of youth, reads like new generation Holden Caulfield: one who chooses detrimental solitude over AJ’s externalized rebellion. Both boys seek validation from or through the pasts of their fathers. Jason’s anger steams below and at face value, may seem that the conclusion of his story is a hasty turn to make his plot align with that of his father. Watching it again, however, made me catch the nuances and give credence to reinterpretation that made the ending feel more credible.
These parallels do not have to mean that the faults of our progenitors get passed on like a deeper and deeper coastal shelf (in the words of Philip Levine). Instead the film explores our choices and cause-and-effect; the complexities resulting from consequences thrust on to people and the destruction they leave in their wake. It’s a journey in which each character carries the burdens forced on them in search of a path: whether it leads to redemption or cyclical existence of “sin” (as Luke says, “Look how I turned out”) depends on the character and remains wonderfully open to interpretation. The tragedy in this movie, just as the root of any conflict, is human desire. The Place Beyond the Pines circles not around sin or redemption, nor fatherhood, but the profound desperation that defines each character as a father or a son. No matter if parts of the movie feel inorganic, the theme of yearning carries the movie to its finale as the slowly-cadenced intro to Bon Iver’s The Wolves (Act I and II) begins to play.
