I first heard about this film on NPR last year around awards season. They were talking to writer/director Derek Cianfrance about his work, and the trouble that he had in getting this project off the ground. I was surprised, and a little exasperated to hear that he and his fellow writers made 67 drafts of the script over the course of about a decade or so, and then only had a "skeleton" from which scenes were to be built around. A skeleton is something that one makes in a week, not 520. This sort of "artistry" tires me, but it sounded like a compelling film, and Michelle Williams did such a fine job in Brokeback Mountain, that seeing her in leading role was something of interest to me, especially when the film was generating so much critical buzz.
A year has passed and I have only just watched it, but I remember that NPR story quite clearly. I must say that script was very much a skeleton, and that places an incredibly disappointing light on Cianfrance as a screenwriter. This film was very much a showcase for the immense talents of Williams and Ryan Gosling (then relatively unknown, but now a superstar) as a married couple whose relationship is falling apart right in front of their eyes. It is an emotional film with a gritty, indie kind of feel, but its power comes from the spontaneity of the actors and their abilities to improv, which they obviously did in the majority of their scenes.
Gosling plays Dean, an artistically talented young man with no education and no real prospects for the future. He talks like he is from the Bronx, but he is from Florida. He works as a mover, and upon helping an old man move into a retirement home he meets Cindy. One of the inspired parts of this film is the talks on sex and relationships that he has with his moving buddy, a big black guy with sex on the mind but always something interesting to say. He discusses with this man the nature of 'love at first sight', and has also come to the conclusion that men are more romantic than women. That certainly seems to be the case with Dean, for despite his rather tough-guy exterior he has a tender soul, and much love to give.
Cindy needs some wooing. She is promiscuous, but oddly guarded. Her defenses are no match for Dean's charms however, and with an unexpected maternal surprise the two are married. Dean says to Black Mover Guy that he saw her once and felt as though he knew her, to which Black Mover Guy responds, "but you don't know her." They married very quickly, but what a honeymoon period they shared. This films takes much time to examine the little moments that two people experience when they feel the rush of love, and how every small gesture can be interpreted as something beautiful. It made me think of a Humphrey Bogart film, In a Lonely Place, where he plays an alcoholic, abusive writer. There is a scene where he makes some breakfast for his love interest and tells her about writing a love scene. He says writing "I love you, I love you, I love you" does not make a good love scene, but writing a scene in which one person makes eggs for the other is. It was a beautiful and revealing scene which offers much to this sort of film which examines they way that people fall in and out of love with one another.
The good times are sure to end, and they do. This film jumps back and forth between the past and the extreme love that they showed one another, and the present where we see the final days of their marriage. We know where the film is heading from about the first ten minutes or so, but it makes it no easier to watch, and seeing them in the past we are constantly reminded of their love. We pray that somehow they will remember too, but of course they do not. There is no explanation as to why their marriage didn't work out. Somewhere along the way the magic died--for one of them anyway.
They have a young girl, Frankie, who Dean treats as both a princess and an emotional equal, and Cindy, now a nurse and the breadwinner of the family, must contend with having two children essentially. Dean's love for her has not changed, but is he wrong in trying to keep a dog alive which has been hit by a car? The two try to share one night of romance together in a sleazy sex motel, and although there are the faintest glimmers that a love once existed they only emerge after enough drinks are consumed, and then it is only a glimpse.
This film makes no statement about love. Cianfrance said that he did not know why it was that their marriage fell apart, and that is the biggest fault. Every film should have a point of view, and he was simply confused about his. He created an alternately beautiful and depressing film with no explanation for the disparate nature between the two. I will not accept that his reasoning was that sometimes we cannot know why a love fails; he needs to make a statement. Otherwise, what is the point? The audience is left no better or worse than when they entered the theater, and the filmmaker has wasted two hours that should have been used to make a statement. That is the point of art.
2.5/4 I give it as a high a score as this simply because Gosling and Williams were able to take a bunch of nonsense and form real characters of incredible depth. This film belongs to them.
No comments:
Post a Comment