Review: The Place Beyond The Pines

After watching both of his films, it's become clear to me that Derek Cianfrance is an auteur that likes to feed his stories to an audience in chunks. If you're reading this review before seeing The Place Beyond The Pines, or even his heartbreaking 2010 Rom-Dram Blue Valentine, then that will mean very little to you. But upon seeing his latest work, it will all make sense. The film has the distinct feeling of being divided into chapters, with the not-so subtle use of a fade to black used to tell the audience "This section of the story is over now. This is the next section beginning." Sure, a lot of films employ this device, to varying degrees of success, but what's so infuriating about it here is that, well, to put it bluntly, some "chapters" are better than others.

The film's first "chapter" opens with and mainly focuses on a subject that it's now clear Cianfrance is very fond of - Ryan Gosling looking tortured, wandering around and smoking. Oh the tragedy of it all. What an unsightly image to be forced upon an audience. Gosling plays Luke, a carnival stunt driver who learns that a previous fling, Romina (a very underused Eva Mendes) has had his child. Feeling a sense of warmth towards his child, most likely due to his own upbringing, something that is only hinted at, he quits the carnival, stays in town and gets a job. Sadly this job is as a bank robber, which causes him to collide with Bradley Cooper's rookie cop. While comparisons to 2011's Drive are inevitable, sadly the two films are very different. While there are moments, such as the bank robberies and Luke's fleeing journeys on his bike that pick up the pace and carry the furious electricity of Drive, the majority of the film uses the slow, reflective pace of Blue Valentine. Basically, there are lots of beautiful shots (the film, similarly to the "young" half of Blue Valentine is filmed on 35mm, a choice that pays off) of the protagonists looking miserable and reflecting on their mistakes.

It's after the denouncement of this first chapter that the film sadly starts to dip, due both to its possibly over-long running time, and quickly formed characters who were are not given much information about. Character-wise, Pines is the very opposite of Blue Valentine - it gave us a full and detailed view of a couple, told us everything about them that there was to know. Here, we are forced mainly to pick up information with exposition. None of the characters in the film are fully formed, and there simply isn't time to get to know them properly as the film is constantly rushing along trying to show us something new.

It seems to me that while Cianfrance is trying to do something interesting, the film is ultimately flawed. The first forty-five minutes or so are absolutely perfect, but the rest of the film struggles to keep up the momentum, or to actually show us anything that interesting. True, the film does pick up again to give us a beautiful and emotional ending, (If filmmakers want to make me sad, all they have to do is stick a Bon Iver track on the end of their film) but it feels like a lot of time has been wasted trying to get us to that point. But really, despite its faults, who can complain about a film that features Ryan Gosling with bleach blonde hair, pensively smoking and feeding ice cream to a baby?

Grace Barber-Plentie