The Place Beyond the Pines. (15.)
Directed by Derek Cianfranco.
Starring Ryan Gosling, Bradley Cooper, Ben Mendelsohn, Eva Mendes, Harris Yulin and Ray Liotta. 140 mins
This story of a fairground motorbike stunt rider turned bank robber doesn’t give you what you expect or want and is surprisingly long at 140 minutes but - apart from maybe a different music choice for the closing credits - I wouldn’t have changed a moment of it.
Last year Ryan Gosling was much acclaimed for his taciturn role as stunt / getaway driver in Drive. Drive was all gleamingly shallowness, a billboard where a movie should have been and his performance was a furious piece of anti-emoting, a big show of doing nothing. Luke, who has a fag constantly lodged in the corner of his mouth and has been disfigured with some atrocious tattoos, resembles the nameless driver of that film. Except he is a character not an icon.
At the start of the film he discovers that he is father after a one night stand with Eva Mendes. Determined not to be the absent, deadbeat figure his father was, he gives up his itinerant lifestyle and stays around trying to support the child. Hooking up with a mechanic, played by the superb Mendelsohn, offers him an illegal way of earning money.
Any more than that I cannot say because the film develops in ways that are always bold and unexpected. In his previous film, the marital break-up drama Blue Valentine, director Cianfranco showed that he could take a thespian slanging match and turn it into real cinema. Here he goes much further; you’d hope that this marks the emergence of major film talent. He’s doesn’t pummel audience with his technique but he’s got a few showstoppers; the robbery scenes shot with handheld cameras are exhilarating. If the film has a flaw it’s that the first hour has a buzz that it can’t sustain for the whole running length.
The plot is a basic generational tragedy but the film skilfully covers up most of the mousetrap mechanics of melodrama. Early on Bruce Springsteen’s Dancing in the Dark is heard on the soundtrack and Place Beyond the Pines has the virtues of a really great Springsteen song – it addresses blue collar characters and concerns honesty but with a mythic sweep; it is epic yet human.
Directed by Derek Cianfranco.
Starring Ryan Gosling, Bradley Cooper, Ben Mendelsohn, Eva Mendes, Harris Yulin and Ray Liotta. 140 mins
This story of a fairground motorbike stunt rider turned bank robber doesn’t give you what you expect or want and is surprisingly long at 140 minutes but - apart from maybe a different music choice for the closing credits - I wouldn’t have changed a moment of it.
Last year Ryan Gosling was much acclaimed for his taciturn role as stunt / getaway driver in Drive. Drive was all gleamingly shallowness, a billboard where a movie should have been and his performance was a furious piece of anti-emoting, a big show of doing nothing. Luke, who has a fag constantly lodged in the corner of his mouth and has been disfigured with some atrocious tattoos, resembles the nameless driver of that film. Except he is a character not an icon.
At the start of the film he discovers that he is father after a one night stand with Eva Mendes. Determined not to be the absent, deadbeat figure his father was, he gives up his itinerant lifestyle and stays around trying to support the child. Hooking up with a mechanic, played by the superb Mendelsohn, offers him an illegal way of earning money.
Any more than that I cannot say because the film develops in ways that are always bold and unexpected. In his previous film, the marital break-up drama Blue Valentine, director Cianfranco showed that he could take a thespian slanging match and turn it into real cinema. Here he goes much further; you’d hope that this marks the emergence of major film talent. He’s doesn’t pummel audience with his technique but he’s got a few showstoppers; the robbery scenes shot with handheld cameras are exhilarating. If the film has a flaw it’s that the first hour has a buzz that it can’t sustain for the whole running length.
The plot is a basic generational tragedy but the film skilfully covers up most of the mousetrap mechanics of melodrama. Early on Bruce Springsteen’s Dancing in the Dark is heard on the soundtrack and Place Beyond the Pines has the virtues of a really great Springsteen song – it addresses blue collar characters and concerns honesty but with a mythic sweep; it is epic yet human.
