I suck at self-discipline. I'm supposed to watch and write about a new film each week and I totally haven't. Oh well.
So anyway, I watched Blue Valentine, after missing it in the cinema (I also suck at being social and normal and stuff), on DVD. I had wanted to see it for quite some time, I always get excited about films about pain and suffering. A simple story really, if you can call it a story. There weren't any real pivotal scenes or major events, just the devastating and harsh reality of a failing relationship, drawn out, sporadically jumping from year to year, from early exciting encounters to awkward confrontations in the later years.
Michelle Williams is excellent as Cindy, a bored, trapped, free spirit; too kind to make herself happy, too resenting to make her husband happy. It didn't ever really occur to me that Cindy might ever really love her husband Dean, played by Ryan Gosling, an actor who played his role so well, that I actually found a bit of contempt for him as well. It's not that Dean was a bad person, in fact, he remained faithful and loving to his distant and cold wife throughout the relationship, enduring more rejection that I can bare to remember. However, it's not really enough to love a person is it? Cindy finds herself confined to a life of boredom, humiliation and crushing belittling from the alcoholic Dean, who is determined to find out what's going on inside her head. It's hard to put blame on either of them for the decline of their marriage.
After a chance meeting at the care home where Cindy visits her grandmother, and where Dean helps move the belongings of a new lodger into his new home (This is a lovely scene where he helps make the room into a home for the poor old man who has been brought out of his home to live there, a brilliant example of Dean's romantic, caring side) they begin dating and form a very sweet romance together. This happens shortly after Cindy is betrayed by a lecturer at her university, where from she hopes to graduate. Impregnated by the vile Bobby, she turns to Dean to support her abort the baby. Queue one of the most painfully sad scenes I can recall watching in any film, ever, as Cindy is prepped for the abortion. Shot in a cold and clinical light, with no hint of sympathy towards Cindy, we are talked through the surgery involved as the doctor proceeds with his tools, ready to invade a distraught and vulnerable Cindy. It is, quite frankly, devastating.
Cindy decides to keep the baby and she and Dean raise the child together. The film jumps back and forth throughout their relationship, perhaps suggesting the bipolar nature of their feelings toward each other. One minute they are dancing in the street, the next they are forcing a spark back into their dire state of a marriage by visiting a motel for the night. A scene where Cindy offers Dean her body, perhaps hoping that this will be enough to keep him at arms length, perhaps genuinely wanting to connect with him, mirrors another scene where Dean is badly beaten by Bobby in an attempt to scare him away from the newly pregnant Cindy. Both scenes hurt and devastate Dean, both scenes don't scratch the surface of Cindy. I couldn't help but wish better for him.
The climactic end to the film finishes the film off well. A humiliating argument at Cindy's place of work results in her losing her job and ultimately the end of the road for the relationship. They go to collect their daughter from her parents house, a great scene which, for me, summed up Cindy's inability to form a deep relationship. Casting her ill father aside, it is clear that his and her mother's unhappy life together have formed a basis on which Cindy has unwittingly built her own perceptions of life. As the child cries and begs her dad to return, Dean walks away from his world, into a street party including fire works and small children playing in the street. For me this symbolises relief, solace, the sorry state they found themselves in coming to an end. Now it is over, they can finally enjoy and celebrate life the way it should be.
I cried a lot at this film. A lot. I could go on about how it taught me about relationships, personal and otherwise, but really it didn't teach me anything I didn't already know. It simply told a beautifully tragic story about love and life and everything that makes it. We each hold our own views on the subject of love, this film only reinforced some of mine; that no amount of love is ever good enough if it is not wanted, that you can only be loved by someone if you truly love yourself, that love conquers all, I could go on.
So aye, its a bloody good film, go watch it.
