I have a feeling that in ten to twenty years The Place Beyond the Pines is going to somehow get rediscovered, analyzed obsessively by film theorists and turn out to be more brilliant than contemporary viewers knew, including myself. What does not make it brilliant: all the obvious stupid and destructive things that people do (deciding that a viable way to earn money is to become a bank robber, not taking any of the advice of a more experienced friend and so on). And yet, there is some poetry among the somewhat cliched kerfluffle that dominates this three-act epic. I prefer my mediations on good intentions and poisonous results seeping through time and space to be less showy and sensational, but the ostentatious narrative is calmed by the elegant cinematography. What is the significance of the pines? I may watch it again even though I am not a fan to let some of the visuals really sink in. The casting is intriguing, verging on cliche and cheeky. Ryan Gosling is cast once again as an outlaw driver of sorts. Bradley Cooper finally disappears into a role. Ray Liotta gets another stamp in his corrupt cop card. Dane DeHaan, best known for his part in Chronicle and Harry Osborn in The Amazing Spider-Man 2, uses his icy blue eyes to indicate that he will be THAT teenager who is going to blow any minute. If The Place Beyond the Pines was set in the 50s, someone would have trotted out James Dean a la Giant or East of Eden. The soundtrack is stunning. The Place Beyond the Pines may become an American classic that we did not want or even enjoy, but need.
*****I saw The Place Beyond The Pines again on Friday night, and maybe you can say that I watched too much Room 237, but I think there is an explicit spiritual and colonialist component to this movie. SPOILERS
Glanton is a name that can be traced back to England. I noticed that Luke Glanton, Ryan Gosling’s character, had a Holy Bible tattooed on his left hand and he had an extremely emotional reaction to the baptism scene. Baptisms are in part an invitation to community, and instead of trying to become a part of that community, he goes into the wilderness, a place of testing, and at a crossroads, meets a man, a friend outside of community who is alone regardless of time (at the beginning of the movie or fifteen years later), but claims to have people who stay in his trailer, casually makes criminal offers then pretends not to care. In colonial time, there were superstitions about the wilderness and the devil. This tempter’s name is Robin Van Der Zee, which means by the sea-his last name suggests an origin from these early times, but his location suggests not only exile from Europe, but from the colony itself. Even though the title is the actual meaning of the name Schenectady, I think that it is also a reference to these superstitions. It isn’t an accident that the seemingly good guy’s name is Avery (which means wise counselor) Cross, and even though he clearly does wrong, he spends the rest of the story trying to reverse his error–including reversing his way out of the forest. Both Glanton and Cross are bathed in red when they choose which road to take–from a traffic or brake light. When Glanton’s son meets Van Der Zee, Van Der Zee is working on a hearse-the devil as a fixer of death- and puts the idea in Luke’s son’s head that Cross is an enemy for killing his father. By the last scene, Cross essentially gets that second chance when their descendants recreate the scene of that confrontation when instead of going upstairs with a gun, Glanton’s son comes downstairs with a gun and confronts Cross. They end up back in the wilderness and the crossroads, but this time no one dies. The movie asks whether or not the cycle of a road leading to hell paved with good intentions has ended or begun again. (Other viewers noticed that when Luke’s son robs the pharmacy, he passes by condoms and Father’s Day cards so there are numerous clever moments in this movie if you have the time for repeated viewings.)