Two stars. Rating: R, for profanity, violence, brief sexuality and teen drug and alcohol use
By Derrick Bang
What a yawn.
And an unpleasant, bewildering
yawn, at that.
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| Although she should know better, Romina (Eva Mendes) rekindles what couldn't have been more than a fleeting relationship with Luke (Ryan Gosling) in the first place. Letting him back into her life makes him believe that he has family obligations, which in turn prompts a rather desperate means of earning some cash. It's hard to view this relationship as credible, a problem that infects most of the entire film. |
No doubt inspired by Crash, Babel and similar films with interwoven plotlines, director/co-scripter
Derek Cianfrance seems to have tried for the same with The Place Beyond the Pines. Unfortunately, he forgot a few key
ingredients: engaging characters, credible behavior and a moral center to what
rapidly devolves into a pointless muddle.
Ultimately, the gimmick is all
that remains: one story that leads to a second, which in turn prompts a third
that hearkens back to the first. By itself, that’s a rather slim thread on
which to hang an interminable 140-minute film. That’s a lot of time to spend
with dull, dreary characters we neither like nor understand.
Worse yet, Cianfrance’s
insufferably ponderous style — long, lingering close-ups, great stretches of
silence as characters contemplate The Meaning Of It All — screams faux relevance
in every frame. One cannot be “deep” simply by wishing it so; the world is
littered with the detritus of bad poets who’ve learned that lesson.
Actually, many of them never did learn, much to everybody else’s
regret. And the same can be said of pompous filmmakers.
The result in this case is
bewildering, given that Cianfrance’s previous effort, the deeply intimate Blue Valentine, delivered the achingly
tragic emotional arc that eludes this new film at every turn. Maybe Blue Valentine’s success derives from
Cianfrance’s greater comfort with just two central characters; the broader
tapestry attempted with The Place Beyond the Pines — terrible title, by the way — seems beyond him.
Cianfrance shares scripting
credit with Ben Coccio and Darius Marder, and they collectively view human
nature the way we might be observed by visitors from Alpha Centauri. Most of
the events and subsequent psychological fallout here ring false: as contrived
as some of the tin-eared dialogue and angst-y recriminations.
