Release Year: 2012
Director: Derek Cianfrance
Running time: 140 mins
It is a practice of mine to refrain from spoiling movies with my reviews. This is for two reasons: I firstly want to give as much criticism as I can without letting plot influence other aspects of the film, and I secondly would like to prevent myself from robbing a reader and potential viewer of the richly suspenseful narrative experience I had or would have liked to have had. In the case of The Place Beyond the Pines, my grievances with this movie would be far too vague if they did not directly reference specific plot elements, and I do not like this movie enough to recommend it to anyone and hope they can be as in-the-dark about the plot as I was. For this reason, as indicated by the “[s]” in the title, this review will contain substantial spoilers for The Place Beyond the Pines.
To lead with positive elements of the movie, I can honestly declare the original music by Mike Patton to be phenomenal. The score was so atmospheric and I definitely felt like I was in Schenectady, NY during this movie, regardless of how much I enjoyed myself there. The cinematic shots of several different microcosms of this town were also excellent, again really creating a synecdoche that keeps the viewer engaged: this is what the movie does best.
What I believe to be its failures are what it does once it has the viewer’s attention. Ryan Gosling, one of my increasingly most favorite actors, brings a fantastic performance as Luke, a motorcycle stunt rider who can only provide for his newly discovered kid by swift means: and according to the strange man Luke meets for a couple days, robbing banks is a get-less-poor-quick scheme that is fruitful often enough that Luke should try it. In an understatement, I did not think this was a good idea, as I’m sure other viewers would agree, so the movie was clearly dwelling in morally grey, “wrong thing for the right reasons” territory, and as a viewer who enjoys being challenged, I followed his narrative in eager suspense.
It doesn’t get far at all, however. Not without a new one starting. One of Luke’s stick-ups goes sour (the stranger warned him not to get greedy!) and he ends up being the casualty himself as officer Avery (Bradley Cooper) corners him in a stranger’s home, where Luke fled. So… that is literally it for him. I guarantee that once you Google this movie, Ryan Gosling appears in the first 20 image results, and in about 80% of the immediate resulting images, giving you an idea of how heavily this movie relies on him for its appeal. This is not a complaint that the movie “underused” him, it is a criticism that this movie is strongly guilty of front-loading. His story was rushed, not so we could get all the exposition done before the real action begins, but because Luke is only allotted a third of the movie. “A third”? Yes. Avery is front and center for the next act, and this humble rookie policeman is hailed as a hero, but feels only guilt. It is clear the movie has switched focuses entirely.
I try not to dwell too long on what a movie could have done, and instead try to focus on what it definitely did do. With such a glaring problem as this front-loading, however, it could have been so easily resolved. If only part of Luke’s story was portrayed, and we learned through inserted flashbacks that he actually had good intentions, not only would we be learning about him the same way Avery did (which would have attached viewers to Avery even more), but we would actually be connected to Luke even more, instead of relying on the sentiment that the tattooed man at the beginning of what feels like forever ago is actually whose actions are unfolding.
It gets worse. Avery’s fellow officers steal money from Luke’s ex-girlfriend, and in a well-acted characterization, Avery tries to give it back. He is a noble guy. But after his father goads him into becoming an assistant district attorney (I’m simplifying that dialogue a bit here), he becomes this power-hungry man who seemingly forgot all about Luke. For half of Avery’s narrative, he is existentially torn up and guilty for ending Luke’s life but after involvement in a dead-end subplot with his crooked colleagues, the viewer must believe the only thing that drives him is becoming district attorney. Yes, the concept of fathers’ influence over sons is established as a motif, but Avery does not act accordingly. Either he should see how inadvertently controlling his father is and change course with his own son, or he should naturally continue the cycle in a cats-in-the-cradle perpetuity. Instead, district attorney duties are now all Avery can think about long after his father’s death, and the psychological damage from his encounter with Luke, about which he even saw a therapist, is totally abandoned, much like how the movie abandons him.
Then comes the third act where Luke’s son and Avery’s son meet at school by not-happy-at-all coincidence and wow, are they annoying. Luke’s son is damaged from his lack of a father and it’s clear the story’s transforming Avery into a power-hungry, overworked, son-neglecting thorn-in-the-side is to make his son feel fatherless, too. They bond over this in… weird ways that after two film acts of complete drama just seem to be swimming in it even more. At this point I did not care about anything that was happening. I understand the message: people’s actions have consequences, but these consequences do not make much sense. Avery neglects his son because the narrative needed him to, not because it actually followed a plausible character arc for a psychologically meek, guilt-ridden, money-returning, greed-abstaining police officer… to turn into this negligent busybody. He simply turned this way from conversations with his poorly portrayed, though well-acted father so the viewer could see his angry teenage son in a melodramatic shot and feel bad for him.
Luke’s son also suffers damage, but he is entirely upset over Avery‘s action of bringing the death of his father, so the third act results in two obnoxious teenagers (with regards to the characters: the actors were superb) who are mad at the same man… even though the movie is trying to convey how fathers’ generations bleed into their sons’. If only it did not tell us everything we need to know about Luke in under forty minutes, fill itself up with enough drama to make Avery a literally incredible villain to two new protagonists, and then turn the morally grey perspective into a story with only one real way to interpret these vexing boys: loads of sympathy. The movie that sought to be ambiguous and complex becomes dull and simple, and as Luke’s son rides a motorbike (*gasp*) into the great unknown to a classic Bon Iver song, the movie feels confused as I was as an audience member. Is he going to repeat the cycle of his father? The greater question is, does it even matter, if the story will just uproot his actions with a well-intentioned police officer who falls victim to plot himself?
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