MOVIE REVIEW: The Place Beyond the Pines

Movie: The Place Beyond the Pines
Director: Derek Cianfrance

The Place Beyond the Pines is a reminder of what cinema can achieve with so little. Our contemporary movie landscape is clustered with big-budget adaptations, comic book extravaganzas, fantasies, hard-boiled political thrillers, and comedies more notable for the bank balance of the actors in them than any actual narrative. I love all (well, most) of these as much as the next cinema fan, but it can be easy to lose yourself in the grandiose spectacle of such exalted productions and neglect the more human and engaging stories on the ground. This film will do much to remedy that. It’s a very simple, very considered story about a group of people whose lives intersect across two generations. It’s set in a nondescript town with run-down buildings and not very much really happens across its 140 minute running time. But it takes these banal ingredients and mixes them into something intelligent, thoughtful, and thought-provoking, illustrating how much a very ordinary story of conflicted people making dubious decisions in difficult circumstances can engross the viewer.

The Place Beyond the Pines – its title a reference to a Mohawk name for Schenectady, New York – tells the story of a stunt rider named Luke Glanton (Ryan Gosling), a cop named Avery Cross (Bradley Cooper) and their sons, AJ (Emory Cohen) and Jason (Dane DeHaan). It unfolds episodically, with the first part focusing on Glanton, the second on Cross, and the final segment on their sons as teenagers. Glanton leaves his job with a travelling carnival upon finding out that former flame Romina (Eva Mendes) has given birth to his son. Struggling to provide for the child, he eventually decides to rob a bank, embarking on a destructive path that brings him into contact with Cross. Cross is the son of a well-regarded judge and a qualified lawyer, yet he has chosen a much less vainglorious job as a beat cop. As events unfold and he finds himself dealing with corruption on the force, he decides to pursue a career in politics. Years later, Glanton and Cross’ sons cross paths as teenagers in high school.

For a film so simplistic in narrative, there’s an extraordinarily intense atmosphere in The Place Beyond the Pines. It’s laden with suspense and every frame seems cloaked in dread, something perhaps influenced by the sleepy, backwoods feel of the town in which it’s set. There is a darkness in the familiar and the ordinary – something perverse and pervasive, as though the sheer tedium of everyday life were itself the horror. This is something more malignant than any ghoul – it’s circumstance, and oppression, and the choices people feel forced to make when they are trapped by both. In this regard, Glanton is particularly cornered. He is well-meaning and has good intentions but lacks the emotional maturity and opportunity to do right by them. His opening segment is particularly visceral, due in no small part to Gosling’s performance. In the hands of a lesser actor, this could have come across as routine and dreary, especially given the leaden pace and introspective style. Gosling is utterly involving however. There’s a magnetism to his screen presence that recalls the likes of Brando. Glanton is a character not unlike the Driver – stoic, detached, something of an outcast in society and equally capable of sincere affection and shocking violence – but there’s more heart to the performance here, a deep and aching longing that he feels wholly but is at pains to articulate. Bradley Cooper is also excellent. I’ve often found him frustrating as an actor, as he seems capable of brilliance yet for whatever reason rarely rises to it. Here though, he is a tremendously compelling player. His character is as conflicted as Glanton and as human, bound by circumstance and a deep sense of duty. Cross’ decisions are equally questionable and will divide audiences just as Glanton’s did, but it’s curious to juxtapose the heroism bestowed upon one by a righteous and self-serving society with the grim fallout reserved for the other.

The final segment lays the movie’s most overt theme bare, as the sins of the fathers are visited upon the sons. This is the only place where the film lags a little, though it brings the narrative to a just and compelling conclusion. Cohen is decent as AJ, but the greasy arrogance of the character works against him. An underlying vulnerability is acknowledged but never fully explored, as this third belongs more squarely to DeCaan. Having turned heads for his portrayal of a dangerously troubled teen in Chronicle, he brings the same gravitas to the role of Jason, tempering it with sensitivity and pathos. The character is as torn as the others, raised by a loving family but haunted by a hidden past that threatens to engulf and derail him.

Director Derek Cianfrance previously brought us the soul-destroying powerhouse Blue Valentine and all the skill that set the latter apart is evident here. It is as bleak, vivid, and stark, tightly rendered and leanly realised (no mean feat, considering the running time). The director’s eye is detached but conscientious, casting a brooding eye over his characters and faithfully rendering their narrative. Crucially, he also reserves judgment, keeping the film squarely rooted in the recognisable and the everyday. He offers a snapshot of greying urbane tedium, wounded souls and quiet desperation, a meditation on the ties that bind by upbringing or parentage. It’s frank and unemotional and distinctly real – the mundane reality of the characters’ lives is what’s brutal, and it is so plain and self-evident that the film need add nothing else to sear.

Review written by: Grace Duffy

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