Agenda Movie Club: Blue Valentine

Blue Valentine

Derek Cianfrance

2010

How’s this for a Valentine’s Day post?

I had to go see this one by myself. I can’t imagine why Amy wasn’t interested in watching a young couple’s marriage disintegrate.

Strange crowd, btw. There was an old couple that got up and left during a sex scene (it wasn’t even, like, the really uncomfortable sex scene, either, it was just one of the relatively normal ones), and another couple that came in half an hour late with bags of fast food and then left after about an hour during the abortion scene (more on that scene in a minute). It wasn’t clear to me whether they left because of that scene or if it was because they were just stopping by the theater for a bit.

Also, another two sets of couples, two teenage girls behind me, and a family of five up in the corner of the theater. Mom, Dad, a baby, a teenager, and a fifth person (couldn’t tell the age of that one). Yep. Just a nice night out with the fam.

The writing is excellent, the acting is better. The characters talk like people talk, for the most part– no one says anything particularly clever, there aren’t any major revelations during monologues or anything like that. Frankly, the characters aren’t even terribly articulate. It’s not anything like Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull, but these two definitely aren’t very good at understanding their feelings or how to express them.

I didn’t connect completely with what was going on, I think just because it was so apparent that these two never really should have been together in the first place. Not that I blame them– plenty of people who get together never should have been together, and usually the only people who can tell are the people who are not them. I get that. But they’re obviously both so impulsive– this was never going to work.

That doesn’t mean it’s not devastating. Dean obviously loves his wife, and loves his child (who isn’t his child) even more. He really does. But his ambition ends there– he’s fine with painting houses because it allows him to come home to his family. I feel like I’m going to start trying to describe characters and character traits here– I should stop that. These people definitely aren’t types, they aren’t simply made up of character traits. You watch this and you’ll see parts of people you know.

Ryan Gosling. Michelle Williams deserves every bit of her nomination. There’s so much going on inside her that it’s hard to tell what she understands and what she doesn’t about herself and about how she got here. But you can see all of that conflict on her face.

I can understand why people would stay away from this movie. And it’s pretty much what you think it is. It doesn’t end happily or even wistfully. It ends with Dean walking away while Cindy holds their crying child. On the Fourth of July.

So, the abortion scene– this is something that bothers me about many abortion scenes in many movies. The woman goes to the clinic, and yet, at the last moment, she decides not to have the abortion. Now, I’m not sitting here rooting for these fictional characters to have abortions (I’m not rooting for them to do anything, because I can’t, because they’re fictional). BUT: People have abortions. This is a reality. Can’t we treat it as such? “Mad Men” did this switcheroo thing. It happens in Juno. It happens a lot in movies. For different reasons, often, but still. I suppose a termination is just that– the termination of one part of the storyline, which means that it’s harder to use it as part of the general plot. But I just wish filmmakers would be more honest about reality.

I will say this– this movie made me drive home as quickly as I could and hold Amy close to me.