About a metformin 500 mg dosage year ago now I was doing my best of the decade list, a Top 27 as it were, and I was trying to fit in a few last viewings before I stopped trying to see everything. One of those last viewings was Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away, a movie I never really heard of, or knew anything about before viewing. I will never forget watching it for the first time because I had this undeniable feeling that I was bearing witness to a masterpiece. Though the most interesting part about that feeling is that it hit me not even ten minutes into the film.
I had that feeling again as I sat in the theatre during Blue Valentine. It doesn’ t come metformin hydrochloride 500 mg pill around very often. I’m forgetting now what scene it is (hopefully I’ll be able to recall on second viewing), but I believe it occurred somewhere in the middle. There was nothing special going on. It was just a scene taking place between Ryan Gosling’s Dean and Michelle Williams’ Cindy, as almost every single moment on screen does. They were simply talking, but the bond and chemistry between the two, character and/or actor, was captivating.
This isn’t your normal romance story. This surely isn’t The Notebook. It’s a story about love, but everything love encapsulates. Not the journey of just falling in love and living happily ever after. Not the journey of love knowing no bounds and traversing all obstacles. It’s a story of what love can and can’t be, a story of what some want love to be and how they want it to last. It can’t be forced. It knows bounds.
The success of this film is much of the same and relies on this relationship between Cindy and Dean. They met while Dean worked for a moving company settling a war Veteran into an old age home, right across the hall from Cindy’s grandmother. The time following this and their budding relationship runs parallel to the present, about 6 years past, as they struggle to maintain a relationship at all with a young girl, Frankie, as the only thing seeming to hold them together.
It seems so easy for this to fall into the melodramatic, which was the case of opinions for many who saw 2008’s Revolutionary Road, a movie about a couple trying to save a marriage, which I quite loved. But I think that Valentine is even far more successful in it’s depiction of love, or lack of love, and the realism that it reflects. There’s one scene in particular that stands out where Cindy and Dean are eating dinner and drinking in a hotel, a getaway night while Frankie is with her grandfather.
Cindy asks Dean about what he wants to do with his life and why he never wanted to be more. She believed Dean could have done anything he wanted. Instead he’s a painter and wakes up in the morning to a beer before work. Dean believes this not to be a disappointment, but rather a privilege. He never wanted to be a husband or a father. But it happened. Now all he wants to do is be the best husband and the best father he can be. His work is what simply allows him to do that. He’s living his own dream.
The scene progresses further in an organic and interesting way that comes to define the divide between these two people who once fell madly in love. I may have picked this moment in particular to highlight, but in reality the entire film is a series of moments just like this. The performances are pitch perfect in their differing levels of emotional subtlety. There is never a moment you see that doesn’t feel real.
This is a great credit to Derek Cianfrance, director and co-writer of this story he spent 12 years trying to make. Starting in 1998, and 66 drafts and 1224 storyboards later, Valentine has become, as he called it, his “manifesto.” And the hardest thing about love in cinema is that it’s often played to melodrama. It’s usually not very realistic and wanders through this existence between idealism and fantasy. Though 12 years of living and experience has clearly taught Cianfrance a few things about more than just writing and directing, things which ultimately helped transform this work above and beyond what we’ve come to expect from tales of romance.
It’s a testament to how intimate Cianfrance’s storytelling is that the MPAA “awarded” him (as he saw it) with an NC-17 rating for a scene that contained oral sex. A scene, mind you, which shows nothing graphic (or even nudity) and in this respect pales in comparison to other films released this year alone (The American). Aside from just showing how truly prude and absurd the rating system has become, Cianfrance saw the NC-17 as a compliment because of how it emotionally affected the ratings board. While the MPAA basked in their societal and cultural irrelevance, Cianfrance basked in vindication that his hard work had paid off. Thankfully, aided by Harvey Weinstein himself paying a visit for appeal to the MPAA, the rating was changed to an R.
I probably have to concede that Blue Valentine is not a film for everyone. It’s not joyful or uplifting. It’s not redemptive or emotionally satisfying. It’s painful, but in a good way. It’s raw, it’s intimate, and showcases two of the finest performances of 2010. It would be hard for me to recommend to a lot of people, but if any of what I’ve said so far sounds interesting, I hope you’d find the time to seek this out. Though I’d caution against a screening in any kind of dating scenario.
Overall 9/10.
Directed by Derek Cianfrance. Written by Derek Cianfrance, Joey Curtis & Cami Delavigne. Cinematography by Andrij Parekh. Edited by Jim Helton & Ron Patane.
Starring: Michelle Williams, Ryan Gosling, Faith Wladyka, Mike Vogel and Jen Jones.
