Blue Valentine is a hard movie to watch. You can feel a little twinge of sympathy for the couples in the crowd at the multiplex as you wondered if they knew what they might be in for those next two hours. You can feel genuine grief for the married couple in the film as those two hours rolled on, watching the simultaneous beginnings and endings of an all-but-true marriage.
Director Darren Cianfrance’s Blue Valentine tells the story of Dean (Ryan Gosling, Half Nelson) and Cindy (Michelle Williams, Brokeback Mountain) as they go through the motions of a marriage far past the breaking point, raising their daughter Frankie (Faith Wladyka) while exploring their heated and equally tumultuous courtship through an ongoing series of flashbacks. Gosling’s Dean is a working-class man who appears to have drifted most of his life until running into Williams’ Cindy by chance, and years later is still, for the most part, drifting. Cindy aspired to study medicine and juggles motherhood, her nursing career and her marriage to the point of exhaustion.
Both Gosling and Williams are nothing but deserving of the accolades for their roles, bringing more vulnerability to the screen than any recent drama in memory. Gosling, who’s been flexing his acting muscle in indie standout performances for the better part of the last decade, presents a man who in one moment is so together for daughter Frankie and in the next ripped apart by the growing revelations that his wife has fallen out of love. Williams continues to prove she’s Hollywood’s best-kept secret, staring out from the screen with a fragility that cuts in a way even the most disenchanted viewer has to feel. If you’ve seen her grossly overlooked performance in 2008’s Wendy and Lucy, you know what I’m talking about. The much hyped sex scenes of the film, visceral in their presentation, serve the story in the truest ways.
Blue Valentine is a difficult movie to discuss without giving away too much of the experience. You might remember Slumdog Millionaire in December of 2008, a movie heartbreaking in its own right that leads its audience to an impossibly happy ending. It was the kind of movie people need to see. In stark contrast, you struck by the same thought leaving Blue Valentine. There are those rare movies that reach out from the screen and manage to grab you and shake you from your numbed circumstance, movies like Blue Valentine that manage to showcase a truly human story without the usual glitz or glamour painted on by Hollywood. It’s the kind of movie that teaches the hard lesson that fairy tales rarely come true.
It’s easy to overlook a movie like Blue Valentine as an Oscar-bait, awards-season hopeful. To do so is truly an injustice. While not likely to pull out a win for Best Picture, Blue Valentine is a true to life, agonizing experience that leaves you contemplative of the experiences in your own life you might find reflected on screen.
Director: Derek Cianfrance
Writers: Derek Cianfrance, Cami Delavigne
Stars: Ryan Gosling, Michelle Williams and John Doman
Genre: Drama, Romance
Source: poptimal