Luke Glanton (Ryan Gosling) is a skilled stunt driver and a sensitive lowlife. He’s got a gallery of tats and facial piercings to prove it. But mostly he wants to reconnect with his girlfriend (Eva Mendes), who had his son while he was away chasing circus money.
Luke has good intentions. But, as played by Gosling in The Place Beyond the Pines, he lacks the ability to follow through. He doesn’t have enough social skills to reintegrate into his own family picture. When he needs money to buy his newly discovered son a playpen, he robs a bank. Then more banks. When Mendes’ new boyfriend (Mahershala Ali) tries to forcibly remove Luke from his home, Luke cracks him over the head with a monkey wrench. See? No social skills.
The Place Beyond the Pines covers some of the same territory as director Derek Cianfrance’s previous film, Blue Valentine, and it dovetails a little bit with Gosling’s other movie where he played a skilled, if stoic, driver (Drive). What Cianfrance and Gosling are mapping out together is an indie landscape where blue collar life is rendered with a few more convincing hues than the usual Hollywood claptrap. Blue Valentine was the anti-Valentine’s movie, depicting a relationship doomed by Gosling’s limitations, and perhaps Michelle Williams’ expectations. But it was still touchingly sad, and had a deeply grimy, lived-in look.
With The Place Beyond the Pines, Cianfrance (who co-wrote the screenplay) gets even more ambitious. This is practically an epic, tracing three story arcs over 15 years. It’s a story about the sins of fathers visited upon sons. But it’s not mealy-mouthed moralism with overlapping plots like Crash or Babel. Instead, one third belongs to Luke’s story, and — just as you were about to say “Hey, I thought Bradley Cooper was supposed to be in this movie†— the next third tracks Bradley Cooper as a rookie cop who possesses the opposite qualities of Luke: he’s socially skilled, but green and trigger happy, and when he overreacts on the job, he’s haunted by the consequences.
Gosling owns the movie from the opening scene: he’s shown striding away from the camera, which tracks him to a circus tent, where he straps on a motorcycle helmet and enters one of those “ball of death†contraptions. Even when Gosling isn’t in the movie, his presence is there, hanging over every word of dialogue. The actor plays Luke not as a glamorized thug, someone who’s bad on the outside, yet clearly good on the inside. No, Luke is just a whirling mess. He doesn’t know his own insides. He lashes out in primal ways for what his heart(?) tells him he should have or should fight for. And lashing out is never really an effective tool for building a family.
But then there’s the picture of him — happy for a moment, posed with Mendes and the kid — taken by a passing stranger. That picture takes on special significance as The Place Beyond the Pines unfolds.
More authenticity is added by Ben Mendelsohn, playing auto mechanic Robin, a grease monkey who enlists Luke in a series of bank robberies. Luke gets good at it, parking his motorcycle and keeping his helmet on as he orders the tellers to empty cash into a bag, then speeding off. But he gets reckless when he finds that being a father requires more money than he’s used to earning. Mendelsohn provides a conscience to Luke’s caveman leanings. He’s practically Jiminy Cricket, warning Luke to slow down, keep a low profile, don’t pull too many robberies in a row. (He’s the only guy who remembers Luke as a friend, by the end.)
Cooper, playing rookie cop Avery, finds himself a hero for his actions in the field, but this leads to complications. Indeed, as soon as Ray Liotta shows up at his doorstep one night, you know the movie is taking a turn down Dirty Cop Boulevard. Liotta is good and menacing, but lacks the emotional shadings that Mendelsohn lends his role. Cooper is also good, continuing his winning streak after Silver Linings Playbook. The third segment of the movie leaps forward 15 years, and it’s perhaps the least convincing — what are the odds, you will no doubt ask yourself? — but it reaches a conclusion that is no less satisfying and haunting in its own way.
What is interesting in Cianfrance’s movies is the conflict of the central characters, which is never neatly spelled out — not even for them. They struggle to get through life, and everyday life is a struggle. Happiness is never something they can simply get by doing “A†or “Bâ€; that just leads to more definitions, more challenges. They act predictably, within their characters, and that’s what is heartbreaking. Whether it’s Dean (Gosling) threatening a doctor and getting Cindy (Michelle Williams) fired in Blue Valentine, or Luke kicking his way into a stranger’s home, cops on his tail, in Place Beyond the Pines, you know this is just how things were meant to play out. The redemption doesn’t come from some stupid Jerry Maguire montage, where the hero suddenly “gets itâ€; it filters up from within, casting a weird light over the proceedings. And leaving that weird light glowing with you, after the movie ends.