Wednesday, April 24, 2013

The Place beyond the Pines (2013)


Derek Cianfrance is turning out to be one of the greatest of modern serious filmmakers. In his last film Blue Valentine, he got superb, career-changing performances from Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams as a couple who fall in love and learn to hate each other. It is one of the more brutal movie experiences I’ve seen. His new movie The Place beyond the Pines is much easier to watch, but no less great. It again stars Ryan Gosling as a motorcycle stuntman who quits his job when he discovers that a former girlfriend (Eva Mendes) has had his child. He is determined to look out for his baby, despite her repeated rejections of him, and ultimately begins robbing banks to support them. Living a parallel life in the same city is a cop played by Bradley Cooper, and these two men’s lives cross in a bold way that you almost certainly won’t see coming.

This is an incredible movie to watch if you’re a fan of technical cinema. Cianfrance knows where to put his camera, how to move it and how long to sustain it. Unlike most Hollywood movies these days, the placement of the camera in this film is almost as important to its success as what it’s shooting, and I don’t think there’s a moment in the whole production that isn’t framed beautifully and with great purpose. Take the opening scene: a long, unbroken tracking shot of Gosling walking through the carnival at which he works, covering a great deal of ground, withholding his identity until the very end. It reminded me of a similarly ambitious stunt that Orson Welles pulled at the beginning of his controversial Touch of Evil. Cianfrance has a lot of Welles’ tenacity and I sense a hint of ego too. One of the side effects of being a genius is being aware of it.

Both Ryan Gosling and Bradley Cooper continue to prove themselves as top-tier stars and actors by giving great performances here that are startling to say the least. I hear that Gosling requested that his bank robbery scenes be shot in one take. Watch them carefully. Notice the crack in his voice and the shaking in his hand. Either the actor was truly terrified or he was extremely convincing. Cooper opened my eyes to his talents last year in Silver Linings Playbook and shows even more power and restraint here. Even Eva Mendes, who usually associates herself with intentionally stupid comedies and cheesy romances, has a quiet and subtle presence that could easily go unnoticed. Cianfrance has a tendency to say more with his camera than what the actors can say themselves, and we often learn about the characters through a simple study of their demeanors, an essential dramatic allowance for which most movies don’t have the patience.

The Place beyond the Pines is everything a great movie should be: original, captivating, thrilling, contemplative and alluring. It is a movie that actually has a reason for existing, with a complete story to tell. The characters are well-written and deserving of its actors, who I assume enjoy being in films like this where they actually have something to do more than in stuff like Crazy Stupid Love or The Hangover Part II. Above all else, Cianfrance clearly adores his medium and has created a modern masterpiece that may not be a huge hit today, but will have to be rediscovered and studied in years to come.

10/10 

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