'Blue Valentine' - The Decline of Love [Minor Spoilers]

Before 'The Place Beyond the Pines', Derek Cianfrance's claim to fame was 'Blue Valentine'. Cianfrance hones on the dynamic relationship between two characters - Dean (Ryan Gosling) and Cindy (Michelle Williams) -, but more specifically he focuses on the juxtaposition between the past and present of their relationship. 'Blue Valentine' marks the last of my Ryan Gosling filmography and I'm glad to say that it ended on a not-so surprisingly brilliant note.

"Dean and Cindy have only known each other a matter of weeks – and seem to have shared no more than a few laughs and a few [get-togethers] – when she accidentally gets pregnant. Cindy has ambitions. She wants to study to be a doctor. With Dean's support, she books an abortion, only to find she can't go through with it. Dean, meanwhile, who works for a removals firm and doesn't seem to boast much by way of professional ambition, is understanding. He puts his arms around her, says maybe they should be "a family". And so they marry, while knowing almost nothing about each other except that, for the moment anyway, they're sexually compatible. Five or six years later, although Dean does seem to be an involved and hands-on father to their little girl, he's also a directionless loser, dozing over his beer at eight in the morning. Cindy, meanwhile, has missed her chance of becoming a doctor and has had to make do as a radiographer. She's not only out of love with (both the idea and the reality of) Dean, she's also bored, tired, frustrated, angry. Hardly surprising. This marriage never stood a chance."

Blue Valentine starts in the present. Cindy and Dean are a married couple with a young six-year-old child and it's evident from their interactions that they are a few misplaced words away from a complete blowout. As the film progresses, the story is intercut with vignettes from the past that inform us on how they met and fell in love. The past is filmed on actual celluloid, using handheld and dynamic camera movements with a warmer more inviting color grade, while the present is digitally recorded with colder blue hues in the shadows and restrained by a static camera that parallels the couple's increasingly sedentary (unspontaneous) life.

Another contrast can be found with the characters themselves. When we meet Dean, he is a high school drop out looking for a job as a mover. He's a caring warm aimless soul with lust for life and seems unbothered by just going with the flow of things. Unlike Cindy, who is grounded, quiet, colder and determined to finish University and become a doctor. Nevertheless, their paths intersect and with the passage of time, the characters turn into a contrast of their former selves. Not just due to how their life turned out; Dean having to settle down and Cindy cutting her education short and becoming a nurse, but because their past and present interactions with each other are night and day. When they used to ask questions, it was to open a dialogue, to try and get to know the other person. Every bit of information being new and cherished leading to more insight. But in the present, their questions are not for insight but of judgement. A way to deepen miscommunications. Asking for explanations to an action they didn't like; Conversations no longer hold expressions of love but are minefields where you have to carefully maneuver around a problematic situation; Dean's spontaneity is no longer an attractive quality but a sign of immaturity and Cindy's rigidness is now interpreted as indifference.

Cindy and Dean's relationship shows us, that with time, love can change. Dean starts at a place of not wanting to be tied down. He is passionate and experiences emotions to the fullest, once he meets Cindy, he profoundly falls in love with her. So much so that he decides to become the father of her child. That's where his love takes him; to have a wife, a child, a home... the things he never wanted but then realizes makes him content, because it's what he never had growing up (lack of a mother). On the other side, Cindy comes from a dysfunctional home, where her parents didn't divorce but made her upbringing vey difficult, so she is naturally wary of relationships. She has a fear of commitment and she is worried about the impermanence of love and why it goes away. Dean's passion is a welcomed change because it's a love she feels her parents didn't have and will surely help her avoid the future she fears. But as time passes on, it's those same strong emotions that become an issue. She realizes she wants more out of life and needs Dean to want more. But Dean is cozy with being complacent and rejects her need for change, which reinforces her fear. Slowly and surely these people began to grow apart. Two people that used to be in sync are now detached.

Citation for Summary - Guardian News and Media. (2011, February 6). Jonathan and Julie Myerson on Blue Valentine: almost too painful to watch. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2011/feb/06/blue-valentine-modern-marriage.