Blue Valentine pt.2

Tonight, instead of studying for my cognitive psychology exam, I watched Blue Valentine with Mike. The trailer had a lot of promise with its adorable ukulele-tap-dancing moment, and I'm all for an 'indie' film whose soundtrack is composed solely of Grizzly Bear tunes. So I thought, "What the hell? This could be really great."

Starring Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams, Blue Valentine tells the story of a married couple living in rural Pennsylvania who suffer from a loveless relationship but manage to put on a smile for their daughter Frankie. The entire film is spent shifting back and forth from their current depressing situation to bitter sweet memories of the past when the couple was very much in love. In the present, Dean (Ryan Gosling) spends his time getting drunk and working a low-end job as a painter that his wife Cary (Michelle Williams) feels is unfulfilling (Cary herself is a nurse and overly committed to it as a way to escape the frustrating reality of life at home). The two try to keep face when they're around Frankie, but it isn't hard to see the cracks in this relationship as the two struggle to keep everything from falling apart.

Their earlier days together are set in New York where Dean works as a mover and Cary studies medicine while taking care of her grandmother and dating the college asshole. We learn that Dean is a high school dropout with a love of music and art, as he plays the ukulele and sings extremely well (I will admit he serenaded me with his rendition of "You Always Hurt The One You Love") After stumbling upon each other at the nursing home where Cary's grandmother is staying followed by Dean's efforts to begin a relationship, the two instantly fall in love and begin a very rushed courtship that leads to the two getting married when Cary discovers she's pregnant with her ex-boyfriend Bobby's child. So the two begin their new life together, flushed with the fruits of love and possibility.

I felt Blue Valentine, although realistic when depicting the sorrow and frustration a marriage without love can bring, failed at establishing a real bond between the two main characters at the beginning. In a way, there really wasn't much of a "relationship". During their 'golden days', Dean is emotionally aggressive towards Cary (ex. when she won't tell him the reason why she's upset the day she finds out she's pregnant, Dean approaches the situation in a very insensitive manner, yelling at her to open up and making petty, childish threats, which ends up making matters worse between the two of them). Even at Cary's job, the nurses refer to Dean as "manipulative" and a "brainwasher", and insist that Cary stand up for herself more, since she typically plays the role of the submissive housewife. From the looks of things, it would seem that Dean and Cary (although seemingly in love at the time) only got married because Cary was having a baby and Dean wanted to do the right thing and act as a parent to a child that wasn't his own. One could argue, though, that the 'real' underlying motivation behind Dean's decision to propose was his own tainted family history. Still pained by the memories of his parents' ugly breakup, Dean is thrilled by the prospect of a "healthy" marriage and immediately plunges into it so he can make up for his family's misgivings and start a life with the woman he ''loves''. Cary's parents are also anything but functional, so in a way, their marriage is a way of showing their families "We're not going to turn out like you." Not only that, but it felt like Cary agreed to such a swift proposal because (having as many as 25 lovers since age 13), she was insecure about being alone. Although the film has its cute moments, you never see the 'fireworks', the indication that what these two broken individuals had was real.

That isn't to say that Gosling and Williams' acting was horrible. I would go as far to say that they outdid themselves (Gosling as the relationship's 'locomotive', trying desperately to push forward and patch things up while Williams follows distantly behind, feeling emotionally drained and trapped by such a passionless union), which added to the film's depth and dark humor.

Overall, I thought Blue Valentine was decent for what it was: a heart-wrenching tale of a 'poisoned well' relationship that has stretched its participants so far that they can do nothing but look back on 'what was' while doing their best to ignore 'what is'. That being said, it is not a film I would watch again. The storyline leaves something to be desired, as it failed to make me feel any sympathy towards Dean and Cary's slowly deteriorating situation. Instead, after the first hour, I was left thinking to myself, "The movie poster threw me off so much."

(Don't be hatin').