Blue Valentine is a
film designed to stir debate, but not in the usual
silly political nor emotional sort of way. Its
debate is of a deeper and more profound measure,
and that is it asks which of the two main
characters profiled in the film is in the wrong?
The film does its best to be evenhanded, and for
every tick of the ledger against one of the major
characters, an equally incisive demerit can be
handed out to the other. However, the biggest
demerit I can give regarding this 2010 film,
directed by Derek Cianfrance, about the turmoil of
a mediocre marriage, is the critical cribbing that
abounds in essays and reviews of the film, online
and off. And that cribbing involves the almost
near-universal claim that this film follows the
end of, or the dissolution of, that marriage. Yet,
nothing of the sort can be convincingly construed
from the film’s contents nor its ending.
Yes, the film, which bifurcates into flashbacks of
how the married couple of Dean and Cindy Pereira
met, and details a troubling two days, some years
later, around the 4th of July, does have Cindy
declare that she wants a divorce, but that occurs
15-20 minutes before the film ends, with Dean
walking away, down a street, after some
reconciliation has occurred. Also, given the
volume of detail that we get on this couple’s
relationship, from the things actually shown in
the two time frames, to those things easily
inferred from those seen things, and the character
portrayals of the two lead actors, Ryan Gosling
and Michelle Williams, it’s pretty obvious that,
like most couples in this sort of relationship
between two weak willed individuals, this run of
troubling days is simply the latest incarnation of
personal melodrama the two have jointly
constructed, in fact, enhancing their bond, long
term, due to its joint effort. And the film
reinforces this with a few telling moments in the
film wherein we see Cindy’s parents’ marriage, and
hear of the marriage of her grandmother- two women
Cindy clearly resembles; especially as she seeks
Dean to be violent toward her, only to belittle
him as ‘not a man’ because he refuses her
invitations to be brutish. In short, this is not a
film about the end of a marriage, but a film about
99+% of all marriages that last till death do us
part.
The 112 minute film was directed by Derek
Cianfrance, and was scripted by him, Cami
Delavigne, and Joey Curtis, and is an odd amalgam
of the good and the bad. The bad is that almost
every situation the film depicts is a
cliché. The good is that they are all
written and acted exceedingly well. On the
positive side, even the banal moments slightly
alter- if not fully undermine, the clichés,
yet on the negative side, the outcome of the film
(i.e.- no resolution depicted) is never in doubt.
That we know how the film will end, despite seeing
nothing of the ‘middle years’ of the Pereira’s
marriage, evinces this film’s travel over well
trod ground, for, from about twenty minutes in to
the film it’s clear the film will not provide a
neat resolution, so little real ‘drama’ is built
up, even as the film does wonderful things in
sketching these very familiar characters who
actually do strive to be more than the stereotypes
they could have easily become, if not for the
excellent acting of Williams and Gosling. While
there is some nice (mostly diegetic) scoring by a
rock group called Grizzly Bear, and there is some
interesting framing of cinematography by Andrij
Parekh (note how the past is seen in mostly
handheld shots while the present is seen in
mastershot compositions), the film is dominated by
its two leads.
Dean is seen as a streetwise high school
dropout-cum-day laborer, while Cindy is a college
educated nurse who was on track to become a
doctor, before getting pregnant. The child is
likely not Dean’s but an ex-boyfriend’s named
Bobby Ontario (Mike Vogel)- an aggressive, dim
witted jock who abused Cindy and beat up Dean,
with two musclebound cohorts, when he found she
preferred him; at least initially. Set to get an
abortion, Dean instead agrees to marry her,
knowing the child, a girl named Franky (Faith
Wladyka), is likely not his biologically. Cindy is
controlling- in a backhanded passive-aggressive
sort of way, manipulative, and is a more modern
equivalent of the character Judy, essayed by Mia
Farrow, in Woody Allen’s 1992 film, Husbands And
Wives. She actually longs for a jerk in her life,
like Bobby, whom she meets at a liquor store and
still obviously lusts for. Dean, meanwhile, fell
in love with her at first sight, and does all he
can do to please her, from raising her child to
being supportive, to moving out to Pennsylvania so
they can be closer to Cindy’s parents, and it’s
clear that the film takes the ‘nice guys finish
last’ adage to its limit, for Dean is a doormat,
and many viewers will likely think he needs to be
a man, not a wimp.
The best example of this comes when Dean wants to
take Cindy away to a themed sex motel for a night,
so they can rekindle passion, and Cindy and he get
drunk, instead, then she abandons him at the
motel, while he’s passed out, simply because she
got a call to come in to work at her clinic. Dean
then heads to the clinic, where he is assaulted by
Cindy, demeaned, and then when he tries to have
time alone with her, it becomes clear that Cindy
has been badmouthing her husband to her co-workers
and boss, a lecherous doctor who clearly wants to
bed Cindy by not so subtly offering her a
promotion if she’ll do so. When the doctor gets
between Dean and Cindy, Dean feels he is trying to
move in on his wife and slugs the bastard, only to
have him turn around and fire her.
Throughout the film the viewer sees the same
patterns repeat: Dean is lazy but content; Cindy
is a go-getter with no sense of self nor purpose.
In one telling exchange, Cindy berates Dean’s lack
of drive and ambition, claiming he has so much
potential. Dean calls her on her obvious
obliviousness or false bravado and asks her
‘potential to do what?’ When she has no answer
it’s clear that Dean, despite his flaws of
drinking (although not to the point of alcoholism)
and wimpiness, is the aggrieved party, and that
Cindy has not grown up beyond the fanciful stage
of a teenager (at her aborted abortion she claims
to not know who the father is, and to have had
20-25 lovers in her brief life. But the root of
the film is that ‘romantic love,’ as depicted in
Hollywood films, is bullshit. Dean recognizes
that, while neither is going to change the world,
they do have a deeper connection than most people,
and it is Cindy’s being hung up on the romantic
narcissism of the Hollywood Model that has cast
their marriage into its state (the Bobby Ontario
scenes show this conclusively). What’s interesting
is that, despite a few viewers and critics that
see fault lying mostly with Dean, the majority of
viewers (if one can reliably tell from film blogs
and chatrooms) see Cindy at fault, and this
includes women. My wife, as example, watched the
film a first time, and felt Dean was at fault, but
in a rewatch with me, came to the conclusion that
Cindy was at the core of the problem. Any person
with a brain will conclude the same, and as proof,
I submit this: reverse their roles, and not a
woman alive would think Dean was NOT an arrogant,
self-centered, masochistic jerk. They would be
right, and anyone denying this role reversal claim
is a hypocrite. The film is primarily a dissection
of Cindy’s self-loathing, and Dean just happens to
be the all too average guy who loves her despite
it all. In many ways, he’s a modern capital R
Romantic, a Ralph Kramden, sans the humor, while
Cindy is his ultra-Realistic Trixie (albeit a
constantly PMSing one).
But, this leads to an even greater problem- that
most human beings do not even recognize when they
have the ingredients of joy and love before them.
In this way, Blue Valentine is one of the more
realistic portraits of love ever filmed. It is not
‘an autopsy of a failed marriage,’ as film critic
James Berardinelli claims, but rather, as Roger
Ebert (whose emotional radar is usually far beyond
his critical one) claims, it is about this:
Dean seems stuck. He seems to stay fixed at
the initial stage. Can you see the difference
between (1) "He loves me as much as he always
did," and (2) "He loves me exactly like he always
did"?
Yes, Dean is utterly clueless about personal
growth. In that way, his immaturity tells him to
just be the same, whereas his wife’s immaturity
tells her to just move, not necessarily grow, for
she (like her husband) seems no more mature than
she did in her earlier years. It’s clear that
Cindy regrets her marriage for that oldest and
least named reason: she feels she ‘settled’ in
life, rather than strove for something (or
someone) more, and this is what fuels her
self-loathing; which likely includes her
deliberately (consciously or subconsciously)
allowing the family dog to run away and get
killed, at the film’s start, knowing it might
precipitate a melodrama that could end her
marriage. Also, unlike Berardinelli, and countless
other reviewers, Ebert does not automatically
assume the film depicts the end of a marriage:
Who was it who said we get married because we want
a witness to our lives? That may provide an
insight into the troubled minds of the married
couple in "Blue Valentine," which follows them
during their first six years of mutual witness.
The DVD, put out by Anchor Bay, has deleted
scenes, a trailer, a making of featurette, and a
commentary by Cianfrance and editor Jim Helton.
While not offering any startling insights, the
commentary does refrain from the usual fellatio
such things entail. Despite all the good in the
film, though, it falls shy of greatness, and even
near greatness because, unlike the films and style
of John Cassavetes, with which it’s almost always
compared, it follows a rote Hollywood formula-
well done and with a few minor deviances, whereas
Cassavetes mapped out wholly new territories in
his best films, and blew them out of the park-
think of the opening drunken scene in Faces. The
film also tends to benefit from the low
expectations of most modern filmgoers in regards
to recent realistic adult dramas- i.e.- it seems
better than it really is because its competition
is so uniformly lousy. On the other hand, this
film transcends the lesser works of Cassavetes-
especially his famed portrait of a bad marriage, A
Woman Under The Influence, even as it channels a
sort of Kevin Smith vibe to it. Overall, Blue
Valentine is a film worth seeing. It is not the
masterpiece its believers claim, nor is it
aimless, as detractors believe. It does, however,
herald the arrival of Cianfrance as a director of
potential greatness. Now, like Cindy Pereira on
real love, he must realize it.
[An expurgated version of this article originally
appeared on The Spinning Image website.]
Dan Schneider
Copyright © by Dan Schneider
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