ROAD TO THE 2011 OSCARS

SLOW DANCE WITH MARITAL ANGST:  A REVIEW OF THE 2011 OSCAR-NOMINATED ‘BLUE VALENTINE'

BLUE VALENTINE isn’t a film that will sit well with people who like Hollywood endings.  It may also prove taxing for those who prefer the narrative structure of a film that answers every question it puts forward in its premise.  But, if you are a viewer looking for raw, evocative performances by two superb actors at the top of their game, then look no farther than this second feature by young writer-director Derek Cianfrance, who studied under experimental filmmakers Stan Brakhage (DOG STAR MAN) and Phil Solomon (REMAINS TO BE SEEN) at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling at once sizzle, settle into, and explode out of their staring roles as troubled couple Cindy and Dean, two people trying to make ends meet in their working-class lives, while raising their exuberantly charming little girl Frankie (Faith Wladyka) and grappling with their slowly disintegrating marriage.

Indeed, BLUE VALENTINE offers up moments of sublime storytelling and cinematic genius.  In one memorable flashback sequence, the young lovers stand in a storefront entryway and playfully get to know one another.  Dean boasts that he can sing, but only if he exaggerates his vocal qualities (i.e., mimics a young Elvis), and requests that Cindy join in on the fun by dancing to his soulful tune.  While he shows off his serenading skills and she sheepishly and bashfully does her silly little gig in the doorway, we glimpse how these two people fell in love.  It happens for Dean and Cindy pretty much the way it could happen in real life:  in the wistful moments when lovers’ guards are down and they’re willing to make complete fools of themselves to get the other’s attention.  Cianfrance uses these stanzas to successfully document the moments leading up to their falling in love.  And with an equal dose of fearless genius, chronicles their demise into marital entropy in the very same way.

We’re introduced to this couple when all the good ‘stuff’ is behind them:  the good sex, the kissy-kissy, huggy-huggy, the unbridled passion.  The bouts of unselfconscious serenading and dancing are a part of their bygone days.  Now, Cindy is unsatisfied in her job as a nurse, when she originally set her sights on becoming a doctor.  In the one cliqued narrative device, Cianfrance uses her unexpected pregnancy with Frankie to put an end to her adolescent dreams.  And Dean (possibly or not so coincidentally named after the real-life “James,” who he channels in many ways) is happy being a slacker:  a guy who brags about having the luxury of chugging a beer at 8 a.m. in his job as a house painter; who never wanted to be a husband or a dad, but now cares only about fulfilling those roles; who doesn’t wish for anything beyond what he already has, not that he ever really did.  His apathy and satisfaction leave Cindy as dissatisfied as he is content, for simply working to provide for her family has her feeling empty and angry all the time.  Unlike Dean, she wants more; but, then again, she always has.  Like real-life lovers set at cross purposes, Dean and Cindy stand at an impasse on their road to never-ending marital bliss.

Cianfrance took eleven years to make this film, but feels he needed that time to gain the requisite life experience to write about the dual aspects of these characters lives.  Until a few years ago, he admits that he didn’t quite ‘get’ the idea of marriage or fatherhood.  “My grandma always told me, ‘You can't force things to happen.’  I have a wife and kids now, and I could never have told a story about being married with a wife and kid [when I first started out].”  The real-life fears and traumas of his youth, however, prepared him well to flush out the realities of a marriage on the rocks.  “When I was a kid, I had two nightmares: nuclear war and that my parents would get a divorce.  I was 20 when they did divorce, and it caused me to question things.  What's the point of falling in love?  What happens to love over time?  I needed to confront that thing I was so scared of when I was growing up.  And to not repeat the mistakes my parents made.”

He certainly confronts his fears in this (un)mythologized script of the evolution of a marriage.  Along the way, he also reimagines an innovative way to tell the dual narrative of a tale set alternately in the present and in the past.  His background in cinematography and editing, as well as the years he spent learning from one of the great master manipulators of the traditionally-structured narrative, Stan Brakhage, has given Cianfrance the arsenal of skills required to stitch together a fluid, back-and-forth dance that keeps the spectator guessing as to ‘What will happen next?’ until the very last shot.  The viewer may hold out hope that the troubled couple can work through their differences; yet, all the while, the narrative demands that she wallow in Cindy and Dean’s lows and giggle alongside them when they remember the reasons why they first fell in love.  Cianfrance’s text indeed represents real life—and real love—gone ecstatically well and terribly wrong.  Thus, viewers who want to take a ride that veers off of the traditional Hollywood Beltway of prettily packaged narrative films tied off with a neat little bow will surely love Cianfrance’s raw meditation on real love, the 'down and dirty kind' called true.

BLUE VALENTINE: THE FILM OFFICIAL WEBSITE