The Place Beyond the Pines Movie Review

The Place Beyond the Pines (2012)

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Written by: Derek Cianfrance and Ben Coccio (story), Derek Cianfrance & Ben Coccio and Darius Marder (screenplay)
Directed by: Derek Cianfrance
Starring: Ryan Gosling, Bradley Cooper, Eva Mendes, Mahershala Ali, Ben Mendelsohn, Rose Byrne, Bruce Greenwood, Ray Liotta, Dane DeHaan
Rated: R
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Plot
A motorcycle stunt rider turns to robbing banks as a way to provide for his lover and their newborn child, a decision that puts him on a collision course with an ambitious rookie cop navigating a department ruled by a corrupt detective.

Verdict
This tells such a sprawling story about fathers, their choices, and the sons that are affected by those choices. Choices are so much bigger than just one person. The sons bear the repercussions of their fathers' sins. You can never really leave the past behind. While the story is completely engrossing, the directing is confident and deliberate from the shots to the editing. Each scene provides exactly what the writer/director wants us to get. As I watched I look for the connections across the stories, how they compare and differ, and I also wonder what the movie wants me to glean from it. There's so much to digest. It's the kind of movie you want others to watch so you can get their opinions due to the depth.
Watch It.

Review
Cianfrance has a certain style and I really like his movies. Blue Valentine and The Light Between Oceans are worth watching. Ryan Gosling usually plays stoic characters, see Blade Runner 2049, First Man, and The Nice Guys. This is no different.

Deliberate describes the directing and the story. Despite being over two hours long it's lean. Each scene provides exactly what is relevant to the story. There's no filler. It feels like these characters are living their lives even when we don't see them. Dialog scenes don't cut back and forth between characters, instead scenes focus on the main character in a tight shot and provide the actors a chance to act as they listen, react, and speak.

It's a three part story with the core of the story viewing how choices follow people and families. Luke (Ryan Gosling) is a bank robber that desperately wants to be a part of his son's life and Avery (Bradley Cooper) is a hero cop who neglects his son. Luke's choices are what set the plot in motion. Everyone else feels the effects. Avery just happens to be the cop that runs into him during a robbery.

Ryan Gosling plays Luke Glanton.

This doesn't tell us much about Luke. He works in some kind of traveling carnival. Part of what makes him interesting are his tattoos. They tell us some kind of story, that he may be impulsive, rash and make poor decisions. All of that is borne out by the movie. He finds out he has a son. While he wants to be a family and be in his son's life, there just isn't room. He ends up working at a repair shot and decides that the only way to provide for his son is to rob banks. Luke doesn't play it safe and act two follows Avery.

Bradley Cooper plays Avery Cross.

Avery is hailed as the hero cop who stopped a bank robber, but he has to reconcile what happened against what he said happened. On top of that Avery's son and Luke's son are the same ages. Avery has to live with the fact that there's a boy who won't have a father. That guilt weighs on Avery and affects his relationship with his son. Avery has been a cop for six months. He went to law school, his father is a judge, and this job feels like his way of rebellion. You know his father didn't want him to do this after law school.

Emory Cohen and Dane DeHaan play AJ and Jason.

Part two deals with emotions and repercussions. Avery wants a way out of his guilt, but there's no easy way out. Avery is forced into an uneasy partnership with some corrupt cops. The only way out is to burn everyone he knows. This movie is set up to compare Avery and Luke. Their occupations couldn't be any more different, and neither are their fight or flight responses and their ambition.

Part three skips fifteen years into the future. This act is weaker due to coincidence and contrivance, but there's no better way to pull together the themes of this movie. The choices Luke and Avery made affect their sons. While it's a stretch that their kids would run into each other as depicted, this is about legacy. Avery became the DA and he's running for office. He's estranged from his son despite having the chance to be there unlike Luke. Avery and Luke are connected and so are their sons. Jason and AJ meet and get into trouble.

While Avery wanted to expose corruption as a rookie cop, when it comes to his son he doesn't have an issue with bending the rules. What we realize is that it's always been about self preservation. Avery knows exactly who Jason is, it's his past sins manifest.

The movie links Jason and Luke in shot framing and actions. Shots and locations mirror. The past doesn't always stay in the past. The incident between Avery and Luke cost two sons their fathers. Jason's father wasn't around while AJ's was inattentive. AJ served a reminder to Avery that Jason's father wouldn't be around. While AJ seems like a kid that didn't have a lot of parental involvement, the inverse is true with Avery. What little we see of Avery's father, it seems like he was heavily involved. From father to son, it isn't always stark similarities or contrasts. Sometimes the results are echoes and reverberations.

I surmise the title is the life Luke desired, a fantasy paradise for the family he wanted. It could also be where Jason is headed, somewhere far away apart from his legacy. I wonder if Jason might become someone like Luke, a stoic loner. Luke was a drifter riding through towns with the carnival. Jason is certainly on that path.

I love this sprawling story and the wide effect Luke's choices have on not only the mother of his child and his child, but also on Avery and Avery's family. Avery and Luke are apt for comparison precisely because people aren't all good or all bad. They are shades of gray. It's one of those few movies you want others to watch just so you can have a discussion about it.