Blue Valentine: Second-Best Film of 2010

Derek Cianfrance’s “Blue Valentine,” starring Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams, is a small miracle. It is the second-best film of 2010 that I have seen so far, after Debra Granik’s “Winter’s Bone.” Every year, a film is released at the tail end of the year that shakes things up, forcing many people to edit their Top 10 lists. This year’s late-December surprise is “Blue Valentine.”

Generally, times are bleak for American film. Audiences, even urban audiences, are only interested in popcorn movies. With the audience for artistic projects down to almost nothing, it's almost impossible for artistic films to get made. Simple economics: if a film is almost sure to lose money, who is going to invest a couple million dollars in it?

But miracles do happen, and in 2010 not one but two young American filmmakers, Cianfrance and Granik, burst upon the scene with fresh, thoughtful and soulful works of art. Thank you, Sundance Film Festival, for helping get these films discovered, and kudos to Roadside Attractions and The Weinstein Company for taking the financial risk to market and distribute them. Everyone involved with these films deserves some kind of national medal.

“Blue Valentine” is a tough film to watch at times. My advice: don’t see it with your partner if you are having relationship problems. It depicts in frighteningly realistic fashion the process whereby romantic love disappears, a subject that terrifies most couples. The film is the best exploration of a relationship falling apart that I’ve ever seen. This is not to say that the film is perfect -- it is not. But it is a major achievement.

Cianfrance (pronounced SEE-in-france) here provides a master class on directing, and Williams and Gosling do the same with regard to acting. If Williams and Gosling are not both nominated for Oscars, it will be a travesty. They play their characters in two very different phases of life. One is when they’re young, nubile and trim; the other is when they’ve lost control of their diets and grown puffy and haggard. There’s only about five years’ difference in time between these periods, but it feels more like 20. Gosling and Williams do an astonishing job transforming their bodies to convey the dramatic, almost scary devolution in these people’s lives.

There is exquisite cross-cutting between the time periods, the editing adding an extra level of cinematic poetry. One example is how Cianfrance handles the moment the characters first meet. He first shows us the male character’s perspective and later tells it from the female’s vantage point. The deftness of the cutting is such that we don’t see this retelling coming. It surprises the viewer and yet also emerges organically out of the story. The editing somehow seems to breathe along with the characters and the story. Rarely have I seen an artistic team (director, editor, actors) so in sync with each other and with the characters and story. Only here and there is there a shrill moment or a little film-school pretentiousness. The youthfulness of the filmmaking style will only once or twice remind you of MTV.

As a culture, we like to think that love never dies. If relationships do fall apart, we like to have someone or something to blame. Someone was irresponsible, or abusive, or unfaithful. Cianfrance doesn’t take the easy way out by creating a bad guy. There’s no obvious reason why this couple’s love disappears over time, but there’s no way to deny that this is what happened. This makes “Blue Valentine” all the harder to watch because we sense it could happen to us. By forcing us to look at some of life’s toughest and most mysterious truths, “Blue Valentine” aims at a high artistic level. By succeeding almost across the board, it is a must-see.

Postscript: Because of the brouhaha over the film’s rating, I was expecting a steamy film. Not so. The fact that the film originally got an NC-17 rating appears to be due to a scene involving simulated oral sex. This scene is very tasteful, and the actors are for the most part clothed. I’m not at all surprised that The Weinstein Company was able to get the rating reduced to R without any cutting. Apparently the ratings board believes that vaginal intercourse can be depicted with extreme explicitness but any hint of oral stimulation of genitals ist verboten. A ridiculous double standard. If you’re looking for soft-core porn, you won’t find it in “Blue Valentine.” The poster makes the film look a lot steamier than it is.