Review: The Place Beyond The Pines (2012)

 The Place Beyond The Pines (2012)

TLDR: Ambitious in its scope, structure and themes, The Place Beyond The Pines is a compelling film with much to admire, but, at times, it falls under its own lofty weight due to plot holes, inconsistent pacing and a much weaker third act.

Derek Cianfrance's The Place Beyond The Pines shoots for the moon but gets lost floating somewhere in its orbit. The film, divided into three distinct acts, is more concerned with exploring compelling themes of fate, fatherhood and consequence and, less, about telling a well-plotted story with consistent characters and progressions. It is an undoubtedly ambitious endeavour and one that, at many points, succeeds in drawing out the emotion it very clearly wants from its audience. However, the film suffers from a habit of cutting corners - consistently jumping, in jarring ways, from Point A to Point B in order to get to the plot points and twists in its story required for later emotional fallout. It is not very subtle and it frequently omits showing the character development depicting the character's pathway to making these fateful choices. In this way, the film's story often feels much better suited for a novel - one that has the time and space to show these gradual progressions that are integral to the story of these characters - or, alternately, Cianfrance could have made the bold choice to create a longer film, more akin to Hollywood classics of the previous generation. Obviously this would have been a risky decision in possibly alienating its audience, but the current end result is a film that awkwardly tries a bit to be everything for everyone. Its more standard runtime of 2.5 hours simply isn't enough to tell such a grand saga that spans multiple generations. 

In terms of the three act structure, the acts' chronological order also ends up being the order of best to worst, the result of which is a film of diminishing returns (despite the poignant final shot of the film). Ryan Gosling's, Luke, in Act I is by far the most compelling of the film's many characters. Gosling plays Luke with the quiet intensity we have come to know of the actor, but the portrayal fits perfectly with this act's introspective and brooding nature. Perhaps because the first act sets the pieces in motion, as opposed to the later ones that begin having to juggle more and more pieces and themes, that it ultimately works best. Act II centres on Bradley Cooper's Avery, a cop struggling with a pivotal past action committed as well as his future direction. While not bad, it struggles with pegging down Avery's core character, and it also involves some cliche corrupt police themes (which is and isn't helped by the presence of Ray Liotta who is the definition of 'actor playing corrupt cop'). The final act centres on Luke and Avery's two sons, Jason and AJ (Dane DeHaan and Emory Cohen) whose lives intersect, thereby bringing past incidents between their fathers full-circle. DeHaan is strong as Jason (as he usually is), however, it is the other son who causes the most problems. It is difficult to know what to peg it down to - if its Cohen's performance or the writing of AJ's character - but something tangibly does not click with AJ. While his character is intentionally a 'rotten apple', he is also utterly obnoxious and it is hard to believe that this type of son - a thuggish white kid who talks and acts like a gangster - could come from a middle-class suburban family whose father is running for Attorney General. While I am not saying that such a situation is impossible, the film does nothing to establish how AJ became the person that he is. There are also more cliche story beats like AJ's bumping high school party (again, which is questionable considering AJ seems to be a loner without friends, hence he befriends Jason...).

But, as with the rest of the film, the story minutiae is not what's important. What is to be taken-away from the film is the thematic connective tissue across the three acts. After a certain point, it is a bit predictable where it is all headed, but when the film does get it right, it packs a compelling punch. This is, in part, thanks to the strong supporting cast that includes Eva Mendes, Ben Mendelsohn, Mahershala Ali, Ray Liotta, Rose Byrne and Bruce Greenwood (it really is star-studded). At the end of the day, The Place Beyond The Pines is worth checking out. Its lofty atmosphere and ambition is greater than many other contemporary films, and I imagine there is a significant audience base who, unlike me, will be able to see past the film's smaller issues and take enjoyment and fulfillment from the greater narrative and poignant themes that the film is most concerned with.