FILM: BLUE VALENTINE
FILM: BLUE VALENTINE – 2010
(Spoiler Alert)
What makes this a depressing film is not the exact story portrayed but the overwhelming prevalence of this working-class storyline. While it plays out everywhere, it is as American as baseball.
While this is an utterly realistic story, the fault lies in the script, jointly authored by Derek Cianfrance (the director) and two others. It is nothing new that a girl gets pregnant by one man or boy and she is rescued by another man or boy. If that girl has to force herself to like or love the rescuer, the embryo should have been terminated for the benefit of all concerned.. In this film, the girl, played by Michelle Williams, has chosen abortion rather than taking up the rescuer’s (Ryan Gosling’s) proposal of marriage. Only on the operating table does she get cold feet about the procedure and runs out to the waiting room to agree to marry her current lover, Dean.
At the film’s beginning, we meet Cindy having some rough, casual sex with a boyfriend, ostensibly the father of her child. What’s telling is that several years later, she runs into him in a liquor store. Dean is in the car. Cindy lights up like a Christmas tree and both are flirtatious. This is the only real show of emotion on her part in the entire film. She is sorely tempted when he asks her if she’s actually faithful.
While we get a good look at the Gosling character and can admire his naïve, caring qualities, despite his capacity for drink and violence, we don’t get much to like about Cindy. Although we learn from her mother that Cindy wants to be a doctor, we see nothing portrayed of her intelligence, wit or empathy. We certainly don’t see how she will pay for medical school. It’s like a five-year old saying, “I want to be a fireman when I grow up.” To be fair, Cindy comes from parents who don’t love or even like each other. Her father is at least psychologically abusive to her mother. At the pre-op session, she admits that she has been sexually active since the age of 13 and has had about 25 partners. She seems to have a relationship problem involving intimacy. Why she has chosen to marry this man is not explained. Perhaps it harkens back to her mother and father. I don’t believe she would have a problem with being a single mother. She seems to be an empty shell as she marries and becomes a mother. Her new husband is a high school dropout without any real ambition.
Blue Valentine weaves back and forth between their early relationship and marriage to a time five or six years down the road. In the newer scenario, the couple has a five-year-old daughter and they live in a small town in Pennsylvania. The now-older husband is an alcoholic and works free-lance as a house painter. Cindy is depressed and tired. Her husband seems to be the primary caretaker of the little girl. She has not become a doctor but seems to work at an imaging center nearby, perhaps as a technician. She has had enough.
Dean has some discount coupons for a motel and he suggests a romantic weekend away. She is not thrilled but agrees to go along. Although this was meant as a means of bringing them closer together, it goes all the way to tearing them apart. Granted, the husband is not too bright or worldly, but he loves his wife and family with all of his heart. He is a drunk, he can be violent, he is a ne’er do well, but at heart his instincts are good. Perhaps he would have accomplished more if he didn’t marry Cindy. He is just the wrong man for his wife.
As the film ends I feel that she will go from man to man, choosing liaisons over commitment.
