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Cast: Ryan Gosling, Michelle Williams, Faith Wladyka, John Doman
Every filmmaker, regardless of their level of success, has a script buried in a bottom drawer somewhere that they have been working on since their teens, but have never quite found the time to make. When these films do get made, they usually fall disastrously short of expectations (Aronofsky… ‘The Fountain’, Scorcese… ‘Gangs of New York’, etc). Derek Cianfrance has honed a successful career as a documentary filmmaker while harbouring this brutal domestic drama; and after a twelve-year struggle to bring it to the screen, it must be a huge relief to have made one of the most captivating and extraordinary films of recent years.
Dean and Cindy’s marriage is collapsing. It is an unfortunate and unavoidable fact for which there is no simple reason and no evident solution. Dean is a creative and keen-minded man who has – in the eyes of ‘society’ – allowed his potential to rot, in favour of dedicating himself to parenthood and being a loving husband. Cindy is a nurse who escapes from her sadness by pretending to care about her job. She resents Dean for finding it so easy to enjoy their basic and melancholy life, and for being the apple of their adorable daughter’s eye. Dean decides that what they really need is a night in the city, away from their stale environment, so they leave Frankie with Cindy’s father and head for New York. In a hideous, sordid neon motel room, the couple drink vodka and stare hopelessly at one another. The silence is penetrated with drunken bouts of laughter and violent sex; but when they awaken they do so separately, both painfully aware that they may never be intertwined again.
This devastating study of a crumbling marriage is intercut with the story of how Dean and Cindy met. Dean is a sulking, hopelessly romantic removal man who meets the quiet and distant Cindy while helping an old man move into the nursing home where her grandmother lives. A second chance encounter on a bus seals their fate, and they wander the streets of Brooklyn while Dean woos Cindy with his ukulele and Cindy impresses him with her tap dancing skills. There are hurdles to overcome – such as Cindy’s overbearing parents and meathead ex-boyfriend – but the raw power of naïve love seems capable of overcoming anything.
Cianfrance has intentionally made a film of dualities – old vs. new, video vs. film, rich vs. poor, youth vs. young adulthood – but the most important of these is the most intangible: love vs. apathy. The terrifying thing about the furious arguments that erupt between Dean and Cindy is the futile apathy at their centre. There is no love here, and no hate, just a glut of emotion, a vacuum that will soon engulf them.
Comparisons to John Cassavetes come at a price – it is almost impossible to fulfil them – but Cianfrance comes as close as any filmmaker this reviewer has come across. Jean Renoir wrote, "The saving grace of the cinema is that with patience, and a little love, we may arrive at that wonderfully complex creature which is called man." Nobody came closer than Cassavetes. His films were not so much well-plotted narratives as experiments in capturing human feelings on celluloid. His characters were broken, desperate, confused, and beautiful. But Cassavetes would have been nothing without the extraordinary actors that populated his films – including his wife Gena Rowlands and best friend Ben Gazzara – who poured their souls into his characters.
Cianfrance has allowed his characters to dictate everything about this film, gradually stripping away any layers of pretence and cliché during the immense twelve-year development process. It takes an incredibly mature and non-possessive form of ‘authorship’ to provide such freedom for another creative entity while maintaining control over the vision of the film. The film is undeniably Cianfrance’s, and yet it is so powerfully enriched by the output of his extraordinary stars. And in Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling he has found his Rowlands and Gazzara, and has trusted them to take the characters and make them their own. There is even something of Gena Rowlands in Williams’ scowling, sullen, achingly beautiful face. The Cassavetes comparison is also earned due to the bewitching, chaotic aesthetic choices. Sometimes the film is slow, faded and burnt-out; sometimes frenetic, vibrant, and full of colour; and sometimes menacing and silhouetted.
Every filmmaker, regardless of their level of success, has a script buried in a bottom drawer somewhere that they have been working on since their teens, but have never quite found the time to make. When these films do get made, they usually fall disastrously short of expectations (Aronofsky… ‘The Fountain’, Scorcese… ‘Gangs of New York’, etc). Derek Cianfrance has honed a successful career as a documentary filmmaker while harbouring this brutal domestic drama; and after a twelve-year struggle to bring it to the screen, it must be a huge relief to have made one of the most captivating and extraordinary films of recent years.
Dean and Cindy’s marriage is collapsing. It is an unfortunate and unavoidable fact for which there is no simple reason and no evident solution. Dean is a creative and keen-minded man who has – in the eyes of ‘society’ – allowed his potential to rot, in favour of dedicating himself to parenthood and being a loving husband. Cindy is a nurse who escapes from her sadness by pretending to care about her job. She resents Dean for finding it so easy to enjoy their basic and melancholy life, and for being the apple of their adorable daughter’s eye. Dean decides that what they really need is a night in the city, away from their stale environment, so they leave Frankie with Cindy’s father and head for New York. In a hideous, sordid neon motel room, the couple drink vodka and stare hopelessly at one another. The silence is penetrated with drunken bouts of laughter and violent sex; but when they awaken they do so separately, both painfully aware that they may never be intertwined again.
This devastating study of a crumbling marriage is intercut with the story of how Dean and Cindy met. Dean is a sulking, hopelessly romantic removal man who meets the quiet and distant Cindy while helping an old man move into the nursing home where her grandmother lives. A second chance encounter on a bus seals their fate, and they wander the streets of Brooklyn while Dean woos Cindy with his ukulele and Cindy impresses him with her tap dancing skills. There are hurdles to overcome – such as Cindy’s overbearing parents and meathead ex-boyfriend – but the raw power of naïve love seems capable of overcoming anything.
Cianfrance has intentionally made a film of dualities – old vs. new, video vs. film, rich vs. poor, youth vs. young adulthood – but the most important of these is the most intangible: love vs. apathy. The terrifying thing about the furious arguments that erupt between Dean and Cindy is the futile apathy at their centre. There is no love here, and no hate, just a glut of emotion, a vacuum that will soon engulf them.
Comparisons to John Cassavetes come at a price – it is almost impossible to fulfil them – but Cianfrance comes as close as any filmmaker this reviewer has come across. Jean Renoir wrote, "The saving grace of the cinema is that with patience, and a little love, we may arrive at that wonderfully complex creature which is called man." Nobody came closer than Cassavetes. His films were not so much well-plotted narratives as experiments in capturing human feelings on celluloid. His characters were broken, desperate, confused, and beautiful. But Cassavetes would have been nothing without the extraordinary actors that populated his films – including his wife Gena Rowlands and best friend Ben Gazzara – who poured their souls into his characters.
Cianfrance has allowed his characters to dictate everything about this film, gradually stripping away any layers of pretence and cliché during the immense twelve-year development process. It takes an incredibly mature and non-possessive form of ‘authorship’ to provide such freedom for another creative entity while maintaining control over the vision of the film. The film is undeniably Cianfrance’s, and yet it is so powerfully enriched by the output of his extraordinary stars. And in Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling he has found his Rowlands and Gazzara, and has trusted them to take the characters and make them their own. There is even something of Gena Rowlands in Williams’ scowling, sullen, achingly beautiful face. The Cassavetes comparison is also earned due to the bewitching, chaotic aesthetic choices. Sometimes the film is slow, faded and burnt-out; sometimes frenetic, vibrant, and full of colour; and sometimes menacing and silhouetted.
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