Blue Valentine
“Blue Valentine” is the story of how a marriage ends while flashing back to key moments when Cindy (Michelle Williams) and Dean (Ryan Gosling) met. There have been other films that have told the same type of story, but few have ever been this raw and riveting in the telling.
When the film begins, Cindy and Dean appear to have been play-acting a life together with their daughter, Frankie (Faith Wladyka), for years. On this particular day, their dog has escaped from her pen. Dean and Frankie do some searching and calling around the yard, but they don’t see her. Cindy takes Frankie to school before heading to her job as a nurse while Dean goes to his painting job. Frankie has a school play going on (it appears to be near the 4th of July), but as Cindy is driving to it, she sees their dog dead on the side of the road. Rather than tell Frankie the truth, Cindy and Dean drop her off at her grandfather’s, and they will bury her that evening. Dean also makes a reservation for them at a “romantic hotel,” which will feel all the more like a last-ditch effort to save their marriage as the night goes along.
Co-writer/director Derek Cianfrance has a powerful story to tell and tells it in a heartbreaking manner, as we see past and present through what appears to be a resentful lens. We don’t get the obvious “flashback” devices that show us who is thinking of what particular moment; the point is to show us how this relationship (which one person wanted more than the other, who nonetheless went along) appears doomed* from the start. Gosling and Williams are exemplary, playing these characters at both times: the hope of their early moments together and the emotional suffering of where they are now. Dean wants to save the marriage and promises to change, but Cindy cannot accept the way things are and wants out. As we see these two part ways, with Frankie in the middle, we are left to wonder how many marriages have progressed in very much a similar manner: with two damaged people (and one loved but now scarred child) who will have to go on and try to pick of the pieces of their lives. I’ve made this film sound like a dour viewing experience without acknowledging the brief moments of offbeat joy Gosling and Williams allow Dean and Cindy to share together (particularly, their first date), but that’s the sort of movie it is; to try and pretend otherwise would be like trying to play-act through a life that doesn’t exist anymore.
