Blue Valentine
According to Shii, the Big Two relationship movies are “Closer” and “Scenes of a Marriage”. I agree. “Blue Valentine” is a little closer to “Scenes of a Marriage”, with both having a blonde, somewhat meek female lead and revolving around a relationship which doesn’t really have anybody else involved, whereas “Closer” breathes through its many instances of infidelity and shuffling around between the characters.
If I ever had a movie-like relationship which is comparable to the aforementioned first films and “Blue Valentine”, then it’s probably the one I had when I came of age. (I know I have no reason to be so secretive, but you guys all know what I mean.) The one before was so otherworldly that I don’t think anything like that actually was in the movies, the one after is so pleasantly normal and ubiquitous that no German novelist would touch it, thence also no Hollywood movie director. With that coming-of-age relationship in mind, the quasi-attempt at having sex in that love motel totally hit home. Let me repeat this key idea for emphasis – it hit home and I felt it throughout my body. It is that particular scene which stands for everything the film is. It has its weaknesses and the nonlinear storyline works so well and oh the doggy loser-version of Ryan Gosling is so cute and “grungy Michelle Williams” (like Shii put it) is so interesting – none of these aspects really matter to me. Bottom line is, this love story is bleaker than anything else Hollywood, Bergman or the French Nouvelle Vague has ever produced, and for me, its pinnacle was not the fight at the hospital but this failed sex scene at the creepy motel.
Nevertheless, I don’t quite get the movie. There are certain things I personally cannot get behind. I would never refuse a friendship to anyone. I would also never separate from somebody who loves me. Most importantly, I would never feel contempt towards a man who so obviously loves his wife like Dean does in “Blue Valentine”. Why does she have to behave like these women who want to be “conquered” and have a man “show the way”? So what if she is the “man in the relationship” – what’s so wrong with that?
Ironically, for me “Blue Valentine” stands in the same line as “The Notebook” (the other Ryan Gosling film where I happened to find him much less attractive, hahaha). Both movies pissed me off at times, but they had these scenes which melted my heart, each in different ways. Amongst these two, “Blue Valentine” certainly is the more interesting one.
Blue Valentine was a sad but somewhat real film for me. I found the marriage very “American” and by that I mean it was every parent’s relationship I had ever seen growing up. It was rare to see any of the people I went to school with parents not in rocky or corrupt marriages. All the fireworks, July 4th, America’s independence shining as Dean walks off from the house at the end made it clear to me. Of course, this is just one way to view it.
Totally agree that the motel scene is more powerful in some odd way than the clinic scene. Sad and complex.
Yeah, there are aspects about the film that feel really American. What’s more, the love motel is like 15 miles away from where I live now. XD (But I am European at heart – I actually wanted to write “20 kilometers”.) At the same time, I feel like this kind of story could happen anywhere, and I think broken families are not a primarily American phenomenon.