Saturday, February 26, 2011

Blue Valentine (2010)


Go see this one with a significant other, and then prepare yourself for a long talk that night. Actually, you'll have a long talk with whomever you go see it with, its sure to dredge up something or other from down deep. I think what was most interesting was how much perspective plays into what we are watching, which is basically an acting tour-de-force, as we watch the rise and fall of a relationship that, really, probably shouldn't have happened in the first place. For instance, without giving anything away, I definitely thought that Ryan Gosling's character was most of the problem with the relationship, but in talking with Tina at the diner this morning I came around a bit. Sure his antics, so to speak, were the catalyst for things really and truly falling apart,. Tina helped me see that Michelle Williams, while definitely, maybe, the more "mature" of the two her emotional distance, or unwillingness to, in a sense, put her foot down, did no favors. Choices are (were) definitely made on both sides in the relationship, and two people that perhaps ultimately shouldn't have stayed together did, and they had to deal with the fallout. This is the fallout. It's really a remarkably written and performed by the two leads, and I can definitely say that Ryan Gosling was robbed here of an Oscar nomination. It's definitely not perfect, either by accident or by choice of the writer things were left to the imagination to ponder or fill in and sometimes things don't seem to fit. I was probably way too stuck on her horrible father and how they still maintained a relationship when he was a Grade-A Jerk when she still lived with them. But maybe that speaks to her issues with men in general. See? I could go on forever. That said, as good as this was, and I recognize that it was good, and the acting was really good, it's probably not something I am going to watch again soon just because it is that raw.

-K

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