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| Ryan Gosling breaks bad in The Place Beyond the Pines. |
«««The Place Beyond the Pines. Written by
Derek Cianfrance, Ben Coccio & Darius Marder. Directed by Derek Cianfrance.
There’s been a lot of talk lately
about the impact of gun violence in our society. Unfortunately,
much of that talk has been fatuous, dishonest or both. But whatever side of the issue
we line up, it’s hard to deny that the debate has been focused primarily on the
short term, on what happens “in the moment” and just after. As the current
epidemic of suicides among our military veterans shows, much of the
psychological impact—and the body count—can strike well after the physical
violence ends.
Flawed
though it is, Derek Cianfrance’s The
Place Beyond the Pines at least deserves credit for adopting a wider,
multi-generational perspective. Based on a script by Cianfrance (Blue Valentine), it starts as the story
of Luke (Ryan Gosling), a little-speaking loner who does motorcycle stunts for
a travelling circus. His act—and the metaphor for his rootless life—involves
him speeding in tight little circles inside a steel ball. He yearns for more
when he discovers that a woman from his past (Eva Mendes) has given birth to
his son. Quitting the circus, he tries to support his new family, but finds his
prospects limited in “the place beyond the pines” (as the Mohawk once called
the site of Schenectady, NY). Before long he’s using his riding skills to rob
banks.
At the
risk of giving away too much, the story abruptly shifts focus to Avery (Bradley
Cooper), a rookie cop who earns hero status after being wounded in a shootout
with Luke. Being the toast of the department has its own dangers, though, as
the hero is tempted to go crooked by a corrupt detective (Ray Liotta). How he
handles that challenge has, in turn, devastating effects on his son (Emory
Cohen), who comes around to having a strongly coincidental but consequential
relationship with Luke’s grown-up son, Jason (Dane DeHaan).
On the
surface, Pines sounds like just one
damn thing after another. When it comes to actors with Gosling’s kind of
magnetism, it seems foolish to drop him from the story---or perhaps just brave,
as Hitchcock once demonstrated by discarding his star Vivian Leigh just an hour
into Psycho. There are strong
performances here, but no message, no self-conscious moral about the wages of
the characters’ bad choices. As in life, there are merely consequences that
unfold whether we choose to learn the lessons or not.
In
this, Pines represents the antidote
to the romance of the gun epitomized recently by Tarantino’s Django Unchained. In the latter,
learning to shoot was tantamount to liberation, and everything in the story
seemed to lead to the paroxysm of gunplay where ultimate justice would be
served. But in Cianfrance’s world, there is no ultimate justice, the gunplay
comes off confused and too soon, and the characters are imprisoned, not
liberated, by its consequences.
No
movie ever solved a political argument. But it’s safe to say that until we
collectively find Cianfrance’s theme as compelling as Tarantino’s, nothing will
change about the problem of guns in America.
© 2013 Nicholas Nicastro
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