Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Truth and Consequences

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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