When “Blue Valentine” begins, a cute little skinny girl of about 5 is shouting out the name of someone, possibly a pet gone missing. Frankie runs inside her house and cuddles on her sleeping father’s lap.
He has a receding hairline, wears his shades in the sitting room possibly to hide the after effects of a drinking binge and his arms are covered with tattoos. But the bond between the two is obvious especially while they jump together on a bed to wake up an exhausted Cindy who is visibly not amused or when they lick cereal off the kitchen table!
Dean is a house painter who works whenever it suits him and Cindy, the mother and wife in the story carries the weight of her frustrations and bitterness in her entire body language. She saw her great plans of becoming a doctor curtailed by pregnancy and instead has become a hard working nurse. They fell in love six years prior, when Cindy was a fresh faced student who had broken up with her awful boyfriend and Dean a high school drop out working as a mover.
They begin to date and there is no doubt that Dean, the romantic is falling hard in love. He puts up with a scary family dinner where Cindy’s abusive father ( the clichés of horrible insensitive males are a tad bit exaggerated) cross questions him, he gets beaten up by Cindy’s ex and finally in a supremely chivalrous and self sacrificing move marries her despite knowing that she is pregnant with another man’s child.
The film goes back and forth from a gloomy present to a way brighter past. Blue Valentine was filmed in Super 16mm for pre-marriage scenes and Red One for post marriage scenes which give a clearly different aesthetic touch to both time frames.
But six years of early parenthood and numerous sacrifices have left Cindy exhausted and in obvious agony. Dean however sees life differently. For him happiness is to be around his wife and child nothing more. Suddenly his grand gestures of romanticism which Cindy once loved seem immature and childish and words pronounced by her which really mean no harm are translated as attacks by Dean. Nothing is going right and in an attempt to rekindle their crumbling relationship, the two end up dead drunk in a cheap motel suite called “The Future Room” which instead of patching up their marriage, fastens its end. Both Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams are brilliant as Dean and Cindy. Williams though had the harder part — she is not likeable, she is a woman in pain. One would be tempted to tell her to get her act together and love this man who may be a bit of a loser but who has made his family the centre of his life. She is the responsible one with a steady job and plans for the future and she just cannot take Dean’s way of life anymore.
The viewers would probably feel sympathetic towards Dean; he is kind indeed, not bad looking and has numerous talents which he does not feel the need to exploit. But when most people’s lives evolve towards a goal or some kind of aim to achieve, Dean is content and firmly stuck in a routine he thinks needs no changing. This obviously drives Cindy to levels of anxiety and anger as she sees herself bearing the brunt of responsible adulthood all alone.
Watching a couple break up especially when the story is so well acted is very hard, therefore it is not because of the R rating and the numerous graphic sex scenes which would make me caution the viewers to think twice before watching the film. It is the pain that the film projects. Anyone who has gone through a loss will see themselves in the story and sometimes just like most times, there will be no list of reasons as to why the couple is falling apart. No third party involvement, nobody going on the internet looking for new dates, no abuse on any side, just love fading away which makes it even more frustrating to watch but yet so realistic. Blue Valentine goes back and forth from young love to love ending, the extremes are intense and sad. It is a film for a very mature audience with a hardened heart.
The Sunday Leader - By Sumaya Samarasinghe
