Blue Valentine is a story that confronts you with a complex issue but refrains from, “This is right, that is wrong, and here’s why!”
Imagine strolling by a gym, you look through those huge glass windows and you see people gorgeously dripping buckets of sweat. What goes through your mind?
Do you think, “That’s someone working out,” or do you say, “That’s what I should do” or “Look at her showing off”?
If we’re honest, we probably think the later. It’s a predilection that is neither good nor bad, but permeates every fabric of our society. It has resulted in movies that are grand social and moral commentaries telling us what to do – the right thing – Schindler’s List, No Country for Old Men, The Social Network, Mother and Child, The Kids Are Alright and a whole host of action movies.
Not that it takes away from the fine cinema of most of these movies, however, it’s certainly rare when a film escapes the moral-lesson pattern and leads us to something more extraordinary and beautiful, Blue Valentine.
Blue Valentine is a psychological autopsy and offers a refreshing perspective on the happily-ever-after of marriage. It contrasts the giddy honeymoon beginning with the sad beckoning of inner defeat and the exhaustion of hope.
Cindy (Michelle Williams) thinks marriage is the train. Dean (Ryan Gosling) thought it was the station. Dean just wanted to be married to Cindy. He never signed off on the grow-old-along-with-me part. He didn’t think the best was yet to be. Cindy on the other hand, couldn’t stand that.
The difference between, “he loves me as much as he always did” and “he loves me exactly like he always did” were the two irreconcilable metaphors that tore Cindy in almost every direction – the crust of the intense drama we see in Blue Valentine.
It’s just not manly to want nothing? Certainly not sexy to have one’s identity so completely defined by one’s relationships, even with family? These were Dean’s confusion and Cindy could not grasp the concept of a guy blessed or cursed with these attributes.
Like any story, Blue Valentine starts off with the milestone moment, the event of startling clarity that allows new lovers to see themselves as a couple defined in heavens. Dean is the grand goofy romantic, and Cindy likes that. She yearns it. Soon they’re playing at this newfound toy, their love. Then they get married after the unplanned but welcomed Frankie. Soon, making a living, working schedules, raising a child and real marriage settle in.
Unlike many movies, this is where Blue Valentine starts plumbing for depth in ways that reflect, if not out-and-out, a careful consideration, then at least a candid interest in imbuing Cindy with a rich enigmatic hot-and-cold interior of complicated morality while maintaining Dean as completely oblivious while still on-guard to it’s intricacies.
Dean’s hyper-expressive self and Cindy’s poker face only serve to heighten the putrid imbalance. Her inexplicable veering from indifference to Dean to purringly hot for him is fascinating. For example, the sex scene in the futuristic suite (a couples-oriented theme motel that Dean likens to a robot’s vagina), which almost earned the film an NC-17 rating, is both necessary and agonizing – pained rejection on Dean’s side, and a visceral revulsion on Cindy’s.
In another scene set in a women’s clinic, Cianfrance gives us just enough information about Cindy’s past. How many sexual partners do you think you’ve had? 29? You could almost immediately write her off as a tempestuous slut.
But wait! She is the same person who wouldn’t cheat on her husband even in troubled times – not even once when her doctor was imploring her out in a ploy to sleep with her. Furthermore, it gets even trickier and almost mind boggling when Cindy get’s out of her car to help look for Dean’s wedding ring in a forest of bushes after the biggest fight in their lives. You want to cry for them both! And that’s how Cianfrance gets you screwed to that screen.
The acting is exemplary. Gosling brings a preternatural understanding of people to his performance, and Williams is amazing in the way she keeps trying to deny emotion and concealing every drop of it. The compassionate and nuanced performances are utterly free of condescension or sentimentality.
It is perhaps one of the few social commentaries that challenges the Hollywood fairy tale simplifications of complex situations and their hardheaded insistence on developing and selling idealized romance that often transcends into the unrealistic expectations within our marriage institution.
When Cianfrance held script conferences with his co-writers Joey Curtis and Cami Delavigne, they were probably looking for something ineffable, a void to fill and a need to satiate. Blue Valentine turned out to be the Inception that pumped that Dream and blossomed into something more relevant and quite exquisite. It’s not the kind of story with the familiar convenient hooks involving things you already know. Not at all! You should see it!
Director: Derek Cianfrance
Writers: Derek Cianfrance, Cami Delavigne
Stars: Ryan Gosling, Michelle Williams and John Doman
Release Date: 27 December 2010
Definitely digged BV. It felt like I was watching a real relationship so that was kinda scary. That scene from the future suite was painful! Reminds me why so many relationships end up in divorce. If the passion is gone then so is the marriage. I would like to know what you thought about the ending. Do you think DC left it open ended deliberately or there was just nowhere left to go in the story?
Good question. You are probably right either way. I don’t know myself and I didn’t want to go there in the review. I felt I had no idea and it would be mere speculation. Maybe this would mean that DC left it open deliberately. I am glad you asked.
On the other hand, DC showed right before the end of the movie that Dean and Cindy still loved each other – the scene where they were both looking for the wedding ring in the bushes. They didn’t want to let go of each other. At least the hesitation was there and quite appropriate since it begs the other possible conclusion you indicated – there was just nowhere left to go!
Plus Cindy really didn’t want to date up neither. Not even her old boyfriend. The whole thing with the doctor was indicative of that. She never really had a chance to reflect on her own life, between work and jumping into the next relationship. So she needed the space. So I will conclude that, she needed some space. Dean would be back in her life. But he too must grow up a little!
I can see that happening. There were some times in the movie when she showed she need space. Like when she tells him she has to go to the bathroom and she runs off into the woods to be alone. But you’re right, she was completely faithful to him even though she was falling out of love with him so I could definitely see them getting back together.
That scene reminded me of Revolutionary Road with Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio when Kate runs off in the yard for a smoke.
Oh yeah! Most definitely. Though I thought the one in Revolutionary Road was sublime!
Thanks for sharing!
Looks like a great film, I’ll put it on my list of things to watch!
Great review!
The Social network I feel is not a social or moral commentary. I have a hard time accepting it. I haven’t seen The Kids Are Alright so I can’t say. I read some reviewers talking about how The Social Network is such a great social commentary than even Chatroom. And I like how you made mince meat of them in your review on Chatroom. So I am sorry, I don’t know why you would bring it up as a social commentary that Blue Valentine is not.
I see what you are saying. I would argue that Chatroom is more of a social commentary than The Social Network. Nonetheless, The Social Network I thought was still a social and moral commentary.
Here’s why. In the end Mark is alone without friends – payback for being an ass to his best friend and initial financier, Eduardo Saverin. Saverin is portrayed as a far more sympathetic character, more warm and inviting – these traits only increase the impact of the tragedy of Zuckerberg’s betrayal of their friendship. This commentary is compounded by Mark’s lawyer when she tells him how nice he is and why he should stop being an ass!
If that is not enough social and moral commentary for you, there’s a lot more. When the sexy, charming, persuasive entrepreneur Sean Parker (played to paranoid perfection by Justin Timberlake) comes in well over an hour into the film and starts finding ways to turn Facebook into a mega-money making operation all the while charming the pants off Mark Zuckerberg; he basically alienates Eduardo robbing him of his investment and rightful renumeration! The moral commentary is that Sean gets arrested and is alienated from the project and Mark himself.
So in this light, Blue Valentine turns out exquisitely made as it never insinuated any particular moral leaning. There’s not right and wrong. Only confusion. This is what most of life is about according to Blue Valentine.
But let me know what you think and why you think The Social Network is not a social and moral commentary.
Thanks for sharing!
Then in that way everything is a social/moral commentary?
Maybe. The social/moral commentary in The Social Network is not as direct or even straight forward as in No Country For Old Men. But there’s still a strong emphasis throughout the movie, on right and wrong, at least that’s what I thought.
My only point is that Blue Valentine does not serve to incline the moral ladder in any direction and I thought they did it quite well.
Do you agree or?
Cool. To that extent, yes. You might could be right! I still don’t like The Social Network as much as people do – it frustrates me a lil.
Thanks.
I liked Blue Valentine a lot, so thanks for posting the review. I thought another theme in the film was about love — how do you know when you’ve found the right person or the right situation. For Dean, meeting Cindy was love at first sight and he never questions why they are together and why things happened as they did. But Cindy can’t just believe that their relationship is as good as it gets for her. It seems she is trying to make their relationship deeper and more meaningful to her, which you pointed out nicely.
My girlfriend said something I thought was very insightful.
It concerns the sex scenes. The first sex seen, we see Cindy and the boyfriend just going through the act. No emotions! He doesn’t hold her she doesn’t really care much for it, it’s was just raw sex like in a bad hardcore porn movie that the characters hate each other or something.
But when we see Cindy with Dean, it’s apparent how Dean just wants to please Cindy. Everything he does in sex is to please her. The difference between Dean and Cindy’s old boyfriend. Then again in the painful sex scene you talked about she wants again the stand-offish attitude towards it and Dean was not about to take that.
Dean is a fine human being. The movie portrays him so well this way. For Cindy, she is the villain, the girl who’s never satisfied with anything. Anything she gets, she thinks she can do better. This is when they start having issues.
My perspective on Blue Valentine is therefore one of misogyny. What do you think?
It could be. Maybe Cianfrance is sending a message to an old girlfriend or two!
Tx for the review. Will watch this.
Great review, a little too close to Roger Ebert’s. I would consider finding an alternative point of view. Great copying skills.
He’s a film critic a lot of people admire. I don’t mind learning from him. Plus, English being my 7th language, I still have a lot to learn from the few people who seem to have a good command of the language. Sometimes he says stuff I think, and he may say it better. Thnx!