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The most well-intentioned words and gestures can extinguish a love that never fully sparked. Opposing ambitions and, especially, a lack of ambition by one partner can often lead intimates apart, with one and often both resenting the bonds that constrain flight.
Resentment builds, not against the circumstance, though it should, but against the other person. A villain is cast in the minds of one or both partners. The two, though still together, grow emotionally and intimately distant. Add alcohol to the dead romance, and no matter how bad a beating one takes for the other, if one partner is remotely, psychologically healthy, that partner's integrity survives while the relationship dies.
Blue Valentine is the story of Dean and Cindy, played by Ryan Gosling and Academy Award nominee Michelle Williams. The film shows us the rise and fall of a marriage, one that is no more or less extraordinary than any other.
This film makes us voyeurs, forcing us to watch the processes that led to the death of this marriage. The director sequences the film so we first see a scene related to the end of their marriage and then a scene related to the beginning. Scenes from both stories are edited together, side by side, until both come together.
Most shots in the film are so smotheringly close to their subjects, in time we hope for physical distance. The point is driven home most vividly when the couple, on the husband’s suggestion, take a trip to an area theme hotel. Their room, which Dean refers to as a robot's vagina, resembles a tiny space capsule’s bridge. The last thing these spouses need is to be physically closer than they already are. The last thing she needs is him invading her shower or her body. The last thing he needs is for more alcohol invading his body.
The film looks grainy. Although we know something is seriously fuzzy within the marriage, the details are kept blurry and pale to our eyes. We know very quickly their marriage will not survive. There is no way it could; yet, we search for the point of no return, we search for a villain on whom to blame the failure.
Though Dean grows emotionally unstable at one point, throwing a punch at her employer, the alcohol flaming his rage, he isn’t the villain. He’s not clever enough to be the villain. They've both had enough. She knows this. He does not.
No, Dean and Cindy are the opposite of star-struck lovers. They, like so many couples, conceived a child out of wedlock, married for what they thought was love, but failed to build a family because no amount of commitment could rescue her from his alcoholism and him from her indifference.
In the end, if there is a villain at all, it is context. It is these morally numbing times, times in which people can't really perceive reality beyond a paycheck, a beer or something stronger, and a quick fuck. If anything, the circumstances of the lives they fell into through compromise is the villain, not anything they intended.
Gosling and Williams are spot-on perfect in their performances. I have met these characters in real life. So have you. You may be one. I am shocked Gosling was not considered for an Oscar. Though she is good, William’s part feels more like a supporting role. Even so, her nomination for Best Actress was well earned.
To the director, Derek Cianfrance, goes much credit. His time studying at the University of Colorado at Boulder, under avant-garde film greats Stan Brakhage and Phil Solomon, clearly shows in the film’s shot selections, pace, documentary look, and concurrent edit. I have no clue how he and cinematographer Andrij Parekh got the camera so close without getting a wide-angled, fish-eye effect. Shooting in the hotel room must have been hell. The edit, by Jim Helton and Ron Patane, is sparce and, frankly, amazing considering how disjointedly the plot unfolds.
One warning. When originally rated, the film received an NC-17 for its sex scenes. It was re-edited to a hard R. The odd part is, the sex scenes didn't feel remotely sexy. Considering the context, the sex bordered on repugnant, desperate, and pitiful, which was likely the filmmaker's point.
This is a depressing, love-was-never-there independent for our numbing times. In addition to the Oscar nomination, Williams also received a Spirit Award nomination for Best Actress. I have not seen the other nominated films yet; so, I can only imagine how good the other nominees are in all Spirit Awards categories.
Being a small film, made for a reported $1 million, Blue Valentine probably will leave the local cinemas quickly. I doubt it will surface on one of the cable movie channels other than IFC or the Sundance Channel. So, this weekend may be your only opportunity to see it. It’s easily worth the price of a matinee.
--- What was the original American Aurora? The Aurora was a newspaper published by Benjamin Franklin Bache , a grandson of Benjamin Franklin. The Aurora was published in Philadelphia, our nation's capitol at the time.
The Aurora was highly critical of what Bache felt was the tyrannous Federalist governments of presidents Washington and Adams.
The result? Adams imprisoned Bache for sedition, where he languished, awaiting trial, until his death from yellow fever at age 29.
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