In good times and bad, their emotions are raw and real.
Blue
Valentine is an ordeal. This is not because it isn't a good movie; it is.
And it's not because the actors don't deliver; they do. The problem is that Ryan
Gosling and Michelle Williams are so relentlessly authentic, so without
artifice, that we recognize quickly that their characters' marriage won't
survive. In good times and bad, their emotions are raw and real. These are two
fine actors breathing reality into two ordinary people leading ordinary lives.
With a
depressing story in hand, Director Derek Cianfrance intercuts the couple's
joyful memories with the dismal in order to spare us uninterrupted gloom. He
begins with a warning in scene one. By the time this family finishes breakfast,
we have seen all the signs of dead affection. The movie is the story of how this
happened.
Dean (Ryan
Gosling) and Cindy (Michelle Williams) fall in love in a wonderful scene where
he, in his self-confessed bad voice sings "You Always Hurt the One You Love"
while strumming his ukulele. He plays, she dances - in a street alcove, no less,
and it's full of innocent charm. They marry; daughter Frankie is born. As in
many deteriorating marriages, the early signals might possibly be put right, but
when the big divisions surface, we in the audience want to tell them, "It's
time, people, to call it quits."
Beneath the
early magnetism lies the thorny question of their dreams. Cindy is working in
the hospital and going to school while thinking about becoming either an
accomplished nurse or perhaps a doctor. She loves her family but is always
leaning forward toward the future. Dean, on the other hand, stands firmly
planted in the present. For him, work is simply the means of supporting the wife
and child he loves. He works hard as a moving man and house painter and is
perfectly happy with things as they are. For Cindy, Dean can sing and draw and
dance and dabble, but isn't there something among all his talents that he really
wants to do? She's a builder; he isn't.
As the
marriage unravels, everything becomes a problem. When Dean takes his reluctant
wife to a motel in an attempt to heal, even the sex they once so enjoyed has
become, for her, resignation. When he follows her into the shower, it has become
an intrusion. Their way of interacting so playfully has turned stale.
Williams and
Gosling are marvelous at portraying both the early joy and the later frost. They
are both outstandingly good at conveying the everyday life and conversation of
two real and regular people. By the time Williams' Cindy says "I can't do this
anymore," we understand that Gosling's Dean just doesn't have the emotional
tools to correct course. But director Cianfrance doesn't leave us there. He
beams us out on the charm of the ukulele scene, the one that makes us realize we
care enough about them to wish they had found a way.
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