THE PLACE BEYOND THE PINES B
USA (140 mi) 2012
‘Scope d: Derek Cianfrance
This is a major improvement over his initial film, BLUE
VALENTINE (2010), which despite major stars and critical accolades, and the
potential to be so much more, felt overwritten, poorly directed, and badly
edited, feeling more like a sketch of what it wanted to be, loosely improvised,
never developing any real dramatic impact and ultimately failing to connect
with the audience. This is a peculiar
follow-up piece, which at times resembles an overwrought literary melodrama,
but continues to surprise by elongating the story, by going places few films
ever dare to venture. The epic nature
and novelesque reach of the film is impressive, even when it often appears to
be a trainwreck about to happen. Like
Hitchcock’s PSYCHO (1960), it’s a shock to see such a prominent character
killed off so quickly, where initially the viewer tends to wrap things up in
their heads, preparing for the inevitable finale, but it simply moves ahead in
a completely different direction. It
plays out as if there were chapter headings, where the film is divided into
separate biographical segments, but none match the intensity of the opening,
featuring Ryan Gosling as daredevil motorcycle rider Luke Glanton, an
over-the-edge carnival rider who continually has to get amped up before his
daring performances before the public, entering a steel circular cage where
three riders zig zag around a globe at full tilt, often defying gravity, as
they circumnavigate their way through a blur of nonstop motion. As he travels the circuit, he moves from town
to town, never taking root, drifting aimlessly for years, where he runs into an
old flame, Romina (Eva Mendes), but despite a few sparks, nothing materializes,
as he’s leaving town the next day.
Through a few plot contrivances, he discovers she’s kept a secret, a
young two-year old boy, claiming he was gone before she could ever tell
him. For some inexplicable reason,
Luke’s life, which has no boundaries or even definition, suddenly develops a
focus around this little boy, as he wants to be a part of his life even though
Romina already lives with a boyfriend.
While there’s a whirlwind of activity as Luke has to decide
how to connect with a kid he doesn’t even know, his first step is to decide to
stay in the Schenectady, New York region, where the Mohawk derivation of the
city name explains the title and the region itself becomes a mysterious
connecting link to the story. Luke meets
a fellow biker, Robin (Ben Mendelsohn), who runs a dilapidated garage outside
of town, offering him a near uninhabitable trailer as a place to stay, where a
couple of grease monkeys can tinker with their bikes. Robin, however, concocts an ingenious idea
for how Luke can apply his skill set in supporting his son, by robbing banks. While these heist sequences are among the
weakest in the entire movie, with Luke growing more reckless over time, the
chase sequences afterwards are simply enthralling, where he diverts the police
by pulling into the back of an awaiting truck. For a brief moment, in what
amounts to an instant, Romina allows Luke the chance to be a father, but he
quickly oversteps the boundaries, arriving whenever he feels like it and
colliding into the lives of others, like a demolition derby driver, destroying
anything that he can’t control. So much
for subtlety, but it does speak to his unorthodox character, where he routinely
crosses the line of criminal and morally unethical behavior, not exactly the
right formula to express paternal interests.
All his plans to be a provider backfire when his ambitious appetite for
quick fix robberies suddenly catches up to him and the police have him
cornered. In a strange and mysterious
turn of events, the narrative attaches itself to a young police officer, Bradley
Cooper as Avery Cross, the man who miraculously survives the violent
shootout. While the intricate detail of
the shifting storyline is interesting, and a daring narrative tactic, it lacks
the immediacy and sense of urgency of the Gosling segment. But out of nowhere, it introduces us to Ray
Liotta as a fellow police officer, immediately submerging the viewer into the
moral ethics of Goodfellas
(1990), where the Schenectady police force is a sewer of corruption. Like something out of a Bobcat Goldthwait
depiction, the exaggerated satire of a guy lauded and uncomfortably paraded
around town as a police hero is actually tarnished with his own stain of
corruption, as among other things, he feels guilty for having killed the father
of another young kid just about the same age as his own son.
Much like Luke, though from a completely different socio
economic background, Avery chooses the fast track of career advancement,
joining the district attorney’s office, where his personal ambition takes a
toll on his marriage, jumping ahead fifteen years later where we see the
changing focus on his over privileged and smugly arrogant son, Emory Cohen as
AJ, who by accident or design seeks out Dane DeHaan as Jason, the surviving son
of Luke Glanton, whose mother has told him nothing about his father, which only
makes him more curious as he gets older.
But the budding friendship of these two, uncomfortable to say the least,
is a completely manipulative relationship where AJ places pressure on Jason to
provide ecstasy pills and other illicit drugs.
Why he succumbs, no one knows, as he appears to have little or nothing
to gain, as AJ is little more than a spoiled, pampered and overly obnoxious
bully pretending to be some kind of cool hip cat, but he’s just another bratty
rich kid who gets away with murder by having well influenced parents. As his behavior veers more out of control, he
continues to suck the life out of Jason, who doesn’t realize the connection
between the two fathers until it’s too late, finally realizing he’s been duped
all along. While the film attempts to
suggest the sins of the fathers weigh upon the damaged and broken lives of the
teenage boys, reconnecting back to the original story by means of exploring
various other subplots, this is reminiscent of a long line of interconnected
movies, the most infamous being the phony and completely pretentious Paul Haggis, karma oriented CRASH
(2004), or Guillermo Arriaga’s interweaving sagas for Alejando González
Iñárritu. Yet this somehow feels
different, emptier, more spacious, less defined, where the memory of the past
has a haunting power over the present, where characters are actually connected
in ways they barely understand themselves, and however improbable, becomes
highly impactful by the end with a terrific blend of poetic interior moods, beautifully
established by the music of Arvo Pärt, and the gorgeous upstate New York
visualizations by Sean Bobbitt. The
heavily impressionistic mosaic actually works as an extended atmospheric piece,
held together by the power of the performances and deft direction that allows a
richly textured mood to prevail over all the slowly developing narrative
landscapes.
