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Blue Valentine
Michelle Williams, Ryan Gosling
I saw this a few weeks ago but have struggled to put my thoughts down. It’s not an easy film to review without spoilers, yet if I want people to know whether or not my feelings about it mean they should (or shouldn’t) see it, it’s a task I really want to complete. So I’ll give it a go.
Dean and Cindy are a young married couple, married perhaps too young for reasons easily but not accurately guessed. Blue Valentine is the story of their marriage, told during their courtship and a few years later. The narrative switches back and forth, recounting their past and superimposing it on their present. There is a large gap in the tale, and the film gives us enough information in both threads to figure out enough of what happened in that gap.
The ambitious (yet low-key) script is up to the difficult tasks it sets itself. Somehow, ‘though the two narrative threads are perhaps six years apart, they each build toward the same conclusion, as if the end of one thread is also the end of the other. Jumps from one time period to the other are at first dramatic and disorienting but then start to feel natural, as if this story is begging to be told this way.
Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling play the young couple, each playing his or her character with honesty and vulnerability. Williams received an Oscar nomination for Best Actress, but Gosling’s performance is perhaps only slightly less impressive. It seems the word courageous is usually slapped onto an actress’s performance when the actress takes her clothes off; yet there is a figurative nakedness Gosling and Williams both present that seems kind of surprising and is the really impressive thing. There are scenes that appear to be completely impromptu and there are scenes that must surely be carefully scripted. Both are played believably.
I imagine it’s easy to play a couple falling in love, but when the best couples hit a few bumps in the road, actors and screenwriters seem to have difficulty presenting them without resorting to histrionics and cheap plot devices. In our real lives, even when we fight with each other we are fully conscious of our love for one another, and that dimension is so absent in most films about couples. Williams and Gosling nail it, and they do it so well that they call attention to the film’s few plot-related weaknesses. Oh, what a small ache I feel when I think of how great the movie could have been if the writers had trusted themselves just a little bit more. Each of the threads’ turning points, though well-intentioned and well-written, could have been so much better with just a little more honesty.
Despite these two little missteps, I must give Blue Valentine a fairly strong recommendation. Excellent acting and very good writing are the film’s strengths, but there is a lot more to be discovered here that I don’t want to ruin for potential filmgoers. If you appreciate good, thoughtful film-making, you should check it out. 2010 was a pretty weak movie year, and this could help save it for you.
8/10 (IMDb rating)
83/100 (Criticker rating)
Michelle Williams, Ryan Gosling
I saw this a few weeks ago but have struggled to put my thoughts down. It’s not an easy film to review without spoilers, yet if I want people to know whether or not my feelings about it mean they should (or shouldn’t) see it, it’s a task I really want to complete. So I’ll give it a go.
Dean and Cindy are a young married couple, married perhaps too young for reasons easily but not accurately guessed. Blue Valentine is the story of their marriage, told during their courtship and a few years later. The narrative switches back and forth, recounting their past and superimposing it on their present. There is a large gap in the tale, and the film gives us enough information in both threads to figure out enough of what happened in that gap.
The ambitious (yet low-key) script is up to the difficult tasks it sets itself. Somehow, ‘though the two narrative threads are perhaps six years apart, they each build toward the same conclusion, as if the end of one thread is also the end of the other. Jumps from one time period to the other are at first dramatic and disorienting but then start to feel natural, as if this story is begging to be told this way.
Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling play the young couple, each playing his or her character with honesty and vulnerability. Williams received an Oscar nomination for Best Actress, but Gosling’s performance is perhaps only slightly less impressive. It seems the word courageous is usually slapped onto an actress’s performance when the actress takes her clothes off; yet there is a figurative nakedness Gosling and Williams both present that seems kind of surprising and is the really impressive thing. There are scenes that appear to be completely impromptu and there are scenes that must surely be carefully scripted. Both are played believably.
I imagine it’s easy to play a couple falling in love, but when the best couples hit a few bumps in the road, actors and screenwriters seem to have difficulty presenting them without resorting to histrionics and cheap plot devices. In our real lives, even when we fight with each other we are fully conscious of our love for one another, and that dimension is so absent in most films about couples. Williams and Gosling nail it, and they do it so well that they call attention to the film’s few plot-related weaknesses. Oh, what a small ache I feel when I think of how great the movie could have been if the writers had trusted themselves just a little bit more. Each of the threads’ turning points, though well-intentioned and well-written, could have been so much better with just a little more honesty.
Despite these two little missteps, I must give Blue Valentine a fairly strong recommendation. Excellent acting and very good writing are the film’s strengths, but there is a lot more to be discovered here that I don’t want to ruin for potential filmgoers. If you appreciate good, thoughtful film-making, you should check it out. 2010 was a pretty weak movie year, and this could help save it for you.
8/10 (IMDb rating)
83/100 (Criticker rating)