"You know something Luke, if you ride like thunder, you're gonna crash like Thunder."
In The Place Beyond the Pines, Ryan Gosling Plays a stuntdriver called Luke, who works as a motor cycle stunt driver for a travelling circus. One day he reunites with a woman he once hooked up with, and when she deals him some shocking news, Luke decides to turn his life around. Unfortunately this doesn't work out the way he planned, and a turn of events eventually lead him down a dark path. This is the beginning to a long, twisted turn of events, and as a viewer you suddenly find yourself watching a saga of tragedy, loss, ambition, consequences, destiny and family, unfold before your eyes.
I was really looking forward to this movie, mainly because of the actors involved, and as predicted, they all did a very good job. No surprises in that department. What really took me by surprise however, was the pure craftsmanship that went into creating this picture. The Place Beyond the Pines is one of those visually stunning movies that comes around every so often and leaves you nailed you to your seat, completely stunned by the visuals. I was not a big fan of the directing in Derek Cainfrance's last movie, Blue Valentine, but I gotta say that he surpassed any and all expectations PBTP's early reviews had given me, in terms of directing. This movie has many beautiful shots of people simply traveling through pine forests, one of the best looking car chases I'we seen in my life, a beautiful use of sound and music that the movie several new layers, things that are all vital to creating a good movie.
But. As important and well executed as these things are, none of them are the things that make The Place Beyond the Pines as remarkable as it actually is. In my opinion, nothing stands out from this movie as much as the story in itself. This might sound like a minor thing, but honestly, The Place Beyond the Pines has one of, if not the best storytelling element I've seen, ever. It reaches the status of classic Greek tragedy very early on, and the way human behaviour, ambition and consequence is displayed through nerve wracking intensity, but also beautiful, discrete and subtle hints and winks is truly breathtaking. As great as the actors are, none of them would have been able to do what they did without the writer/director's script and story. This is Derek Cainfrance's masterpiece, his baby, and it's a piece of hard work that I will look back upon in awe, seen from a story telling point of view.
Being as cinematic and story based as it is, this is very much a movie that you have to let yourself completely submerge into, in order to enjoy it to it's maximum potential. Sure, it has some dramatic and breathtaking suspense scenes that everyone can enjoy, but the vast majority of this movie consists of brutally honest depictions of human behaviour, motivations and consequences, and you have to be able to enjoy these things in order to really appreciate the movie. It's a moody, atmospheric and grand picture, nothing like most movies that come out these days, and as a result of this, a lot of people who maybe don't care that much about movies that are based on dialogue and emotion storytelling won't enjoy this movie nearly as much as other people who do. You kinda have to be a fan of movies and movie creation, have an interest in human psychology and emotional elements like ambition, hopelessness and frustration, in order to enjoy the full 140 minutes of this completely original movie.
When I say that The Place Beyond the Pines is an original movie, I truly mean it. It's 100 % completely unpredictable, and it's put together in a way that makes it seem like a saga or a legend that spans over a huge period of time. Every so often you hear a movie being described as "taking movies to a new level", but in my humble opinion, none has ever been more fitting for that title than The Place Beyond the Pines, simply because of how original it is. It's completely possible that many other directors have done "things" that are similar to what Derek Cainfrance has done with this movie, but I've personally never experiences anything like it.
Now, this is the part of the review where I normally begin to list the things i didn't like about the movie I'm reviewing, and looking at all the praise I've given it so far, I bet it's hard to imagine that i would have a single gripe about The Place Beyond the Pines, right? Well, I do. This will be the first time in my history of blogging that I'll be complaining about the length of a movie, because honestly, this movie is too long. I know this might sound a bit contradictory to what I'we said about the amazing storytelling elements in the movie and the whole thing about enjoying films based on dialogue and emotional depictions and that jazz. What I mean when i say it's too long, is that I was very aware of just how much time i spent sitting still. After we had exited the theatre, my mother and sister told me in detail how they never felt like The Pines was a long movie. I wish I'd felt the same way, but the fact of the matter is that it felt like a four hour movie to me. It was an exhausting movie to watch, and it's taken me more than three days to digest it completely. No matter how great a movie is acted and and created, if it makes me, the guy who would gladly watch the 3.5 hour extended edition of Gladiator every single day of the week, actually think that a movie is too long, that kinda says a lot about how slow paced a movie actually is.
The Place Beyond the Pines is like three movies mixed into one. I won't explain how this works out in detail because I'll end up spoiling too much, but I will say that the first two parts are 100 % worthy of the Movie Magic rating. Some people claim that the movie quote on quote "falls apart" in the last part, but that's not how i see it. Granted, it becomes overambitious and some of the things that happens are a little cliché and way too coincidental, but at no point in time was I ready to straight up leave the theatre in anger, like other reviewers have stated they were. I enjoyed the last part less than the first two, but it was still worth watching, even though it made the over all movie feel much longer than it was.
All in all The Place Beyond the Pines is a fantastic story that deserves major praise for the craftsmanship and dedication that went into creating it. I didn't get to talk much about the acting in this review, but if I had to summarice it shortly, I'd say that Bradley Cooper and Ben Mendelsohn both have very bright futures, that Dane DeHaan has an even brighter one, and that Ryan Gosling is one of the best actors working today, even though he plays the same character in almost all the movies he has been in recently. No one plays the "silent but violent" role better than Gosling, let's settle at that.
No matter how long it is and how slow paced it is at times, The Place Beyond the Pines is a movie I'd be glad to own on BluRay, even though I might end up only watching the first two parts. It's got a lot of movie magic potential, but the fact that watching it almost becomes a physical challenge drags it down a whole lot. The Pines gets my seal of approval, and a huge one at that. (4/6)
The Place Beyond the pine IMDb page here
The Place Beyond the Pines trailer here
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