A Roaring Storm: The Place Beyond the Pines

You know the way a film that’s anything other than Hollywood-sterile is referred to as “gritty”? How it’s insinuated that anything aesthetically visceral or thematically true to life’s sometime darkness is cloaked in filth? It’s overused and undercooked, but wait one second, because buried in the heap there are films that deserve the title of “gritty”, and not just for lack of a better word. They are the rough, the dark and demanding, and The Place Beyond the Pines is one of these. There’s enough grit here to fog the lens.

Derek Cianfrance (Blue Valentine) teams up with the thinking woman’s pin-up Ryan Gosling for an intense crime drama. Grungy James Dean-ish motorbike stunt rider Luke Glanton (Gosling) discovers he has an infant son with ex-lover Romina (Eva Mendes) and embarks on a bank-robbing spree to provide for the baby, with whom he has felt an immediate connection. Imagine his train of thought: “I love you, son, but instead of going all Cats-in-the-Cradle, my way of showing love is stealing money at gunpoint then hightailing it on my motorbike at a speed that will turn me into flying mince at the slightest mistake! What could possibly go wrong?” It doesn’t make much sense, but we all know bad decisions make good films – and wicked chase scenes.

This story interweaves with the life of Avery Cross (Bradley Cooper) a policeman tortured by his conscience, all while raising his own infant son with his wife Jennifer (Rose Byrne). Cooper’s Avery comes off as two-dimensional against the excitement and stone coolness of Luke. C’mon, Avery, just a little badassery is all we ask. The tensions and emotions of the protagonists’ stories will have a lasting effect on the lives of both men. So we have character and feeling and action, does it all work? Well… almost. This film is captured best through a line you know made everyone on set high five each other: “If you ride like lightning, you’re going to crash like thunder.” That loss of momentum happens – sure, thunder is good enough, but I think we all prefer lightning.

The proverbial lightning of this film is the first third, which focuses on Luke and his story. This film might eventually “crash”, but I will be optimistic and delight in this first act before retreating to my cynicism. Performance and screenplay praise are forthcoming, I promise, but I feel this film’s visual and artistic aspects give it a lot of its strength and are the biggest point of audience engagement. Stunning visuals and camerawork by DOP Sean Bobbit make a world as dark as Luke’s troubles – the palette is black and blue like a bruise, with flashes of nosebleed-red and tobacco-spit-brown. Designer Inbal Weinberg recreates working-class suburbia with a Lynchian chill; and his icky neon carnival (the place where Luke does his stunt act) through briefly used, is a visual highlight. Mike Patton’s eerie score rounds out the heavy-hearted drama. These are all combined by the deft hand of Cianfrance to create atmospherics and character within seconds; the best example being the swing-bang-humdinger of a opening shot tracking Luke through a seedy carnival to the tent where he performs. The film’s first image is Luke’s tattooed and chiselled abs (at which point my friend leaned over to me in the cinema and said “This is already worth the ticket”) as he flicks a switchblade open and closed like a nervous tic; before following his head and shoulders as he dons his red leather jacket and stalks past flashing sideshows in the garish three-ring circus. We’re dragged into his world, stumbling behind him as he strides on toward death through the cooling twilight. You feel Luke Glanton is a spirit of James Dean, the boy pretending to be a man, hurling himself into darkness.

If we can’t have James Dean, then we have his heir. Ryan Gosling steals the show. His Luke is an enigma; his face tells us everything and nothing at the same time – we know all about the pain he is in, but none of how he came to be that way. His face can say “I want to kill you” and “I want to kill myself” at the same time; he is simultaneously terrifying and vulnerable. When he attacks Romina’s new partner with a wrench, he lifts his crying son away from that chaos and carries him downstairs to await the ambulance. He is repeatedly hushing, saying “It’s alright”, but continues after the baby is quiet. That’s when it hits you. This tanked and tattooed bank robber isn’t just talking to his infant. He’s talking to himself. He’s the fastest thing on two wheels, screaming along like – excuse me – a motherfucker. This faultless hero image is somehow shattered and celebrated at the same time; I don’t remember many other bank robber’s voices cracking up an octave as they yell at people to get on the floor, like a real person’s would. Gosling uses a choice like that to continue his bravura performance even when his entire face and head are covered by a motorbike helmet. That’s acting. It should also be noted that Gosling did nearly all of his own stunt work on this film (save the death-defying 360 degree turns in his character’s circus act; thank Christ, there’s a reason those are called death-defying). When you see the way his motorbike weaves and fishtails while going at practically the speed of light, you will understand that is no mean feat. The way the motorbike sequences are filmed bring new meaning to ‘edge of your seat’; you’re hanging on for dear life as Luke squeals, weaves and fishtails his way through the streets while police cars hightail it behind him. It’s one of the coolest sequences I’ve ever seen on film, and they get away with it because it doesn’t feel like an exhibition of cool-guy-skills, it feels like an open wound. Erin Benach’s costume team disguises Ryan Gosling with copious tattoos, ratty Metallica t-shirts and an icky bleach job. Turning Mr Dream Boy USA into a seamless mix of carnie hick and bohemian punk is no mean feat, and they pull it off with panache. That presentation collides with his character, making his tattoos more like bandaids than knuckledusters, the one near his eye like a permanent tear-track.

Besides being burdened with glorious talent, Gosling is also working with a stellar screenplay by Cianfrance, Ben Coccio and Darius Marder. They sketch character and feeling perfectly, and in refreshingly few words. I think the most grittily beautiful conversation is Luke trying out daddy-experiences for his baby Jason: “I want to do something with him that’s his first time. I’m going to look in his face when he tries ice cream. Every time he has ice cream for the rest of his life he’s going to see my fucking face.” This is a fable about darkness in humans, and the ripples that shake down through lives and generations. The words are tender and poignant, it’s misaligned plot that lets the side down.

Gosling’s tour-de-force performance is given solid backup by a satisfyingly glammed-down and put-upon Eva Mendes – her usual sparkle and distracting beauty is stripped back to the pain of a woman trying to deal with the haymakers life swings at her. And they’re pretty much all in the form of men. Rose Byrne is exceptionally strong as Avery’s wife – she is heartbreaking even in pitch darkness – before she is thrown from proceedings altogether somewhat casually. Ben Mendelsohn disappears in to the skin of a no-count hick with aplomb. Another standout is the young Dane DeHaan, a dishevelled moppet who looks more like a Xavier Dolan muse than any Yank boy. To tell you who he is will give things away, but be assured that he steps up to the plate, turning in the film’s third best performance after Gosling and Byrne, and considering how good they are, that’s an achievement. His offsider is Emory Cohen, whose entire physicality and pattern of speech seems to be that of a baked Sylvester Stallone. The letdown, most unfortunately, is Bradley Cooper as the insipid Avery – it’s mostly his strained and impassive performance that makes the film lose its momentum after the first act. I want to like him, really I do, but he always seems to have the same expression on his face. His acting just does not cut it for me. I add that “for me” part because performances, like films, are subjective; you might love one I hate, and I might love one you hate. If Bradley Cooper and his ways work for you, then chances are you will love this film, even if I didn’t, and that’s a beautiful thing.

 So let’s talk about this lightning ride crashing like thunder… simply put, Avery Cross is no match for Luke Glanton. To carry off having multiple protagonists, a film has to make them as interesting as each other, and that simply doesn’t happen here. I can’t tell you precisely what the biggest mistake is without giving away the entire story, so I’ll just say that what Cianfrance tries to do in this film is what Alfred Hitchcock nailed in Psycho. Is that ambiguous enough? The multi-generational scope also falls flat. For all their skill in crafting conversation and character, the screenwriters don’t know how to handle a plot, particularly one so sprawling with difficult emotion and moral tragedy. After the soaring first act, taking an enigmatic character and sending him on a journey into self-destruction in the guise of self-improvement; the film veers so steeply, and proceedings become merely decent over magnificent. It feels like a slightly-above-average-cop-revenge-drama, the sort Mark Wahlberg in serious-actor-mode would do, has been tacked onto the end of an explosive character piece. Yes, the cop movie is passable, but when your head has been split open by such incredible filmmaking, writing and acting in the time before, the cop movie feels like a bit of a letdown. That second part is only saved by the credible performances (save Bradley Cooper) and emotionally effective audiovisuals.

Cianfrance took on such a passionate and complex story about humans trying to deal with what life gives them, even if he doesn’t quite manage it perfectly. He messed up at doing something unique rather than adding another conventional story to the pile, and for that, for this film, he should have our respect.