I notice it does not have its own thread. Would love to discuss, if anyone else has seen it.
I just saw it last week along with 10 other movies to get major nominations. (I skipped Rabbit Hole and Toy Story for being too depressing and a cartoon.)
To be honest, I thought Ryan Gosling’s performance was more impressive than Michelle Williams, but I did think she was great. In reading pre-Oscar articles in places like Entertainment Weekly, I see Gosling is listed in the “snubs” category which I agree with.
Such a downer of a movie, but then again most of the major nominees are downers. The thing that struck me is that she really just gave up on the marriage, which is a bit of a weird message. I could see not wanting to live with Ryan Gosling’s character since he was pretty annoying (to me) throughout the entire movie, but I think he is basically a good guy and she did love him at one time. So I think her giving up on him was weak.
Sure he drinks, but come on, this is a guy who married a woman pregnant with another man’s child. Gotta get some bonus points for that, right?
Yeah, right. I married a woman with two kids. Watched 'em, fed 'em, played with ‘em, potty trained the younger one. Didn’t stop her from stabbing me in the friggin’ back. :rolleyes:
That aside, a fine movie, if painful to watch. Sigh.
I caught a several-minute-long promotional piece for Blue Valentine last night on Showtime, including interviews with Derek Cianfrance, Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams.
I think I was sidetracked by looking for motivations and/or justifications. It seems the intent of the movie was simply to explore the emotional truth of falling in and out of love. If that was the intent, they hit it out of the park. It was definitely painful to watch.
The structure of the movie kind of challenges you to ask about what happened between the two characters. On Charlie Rose, Gosling said that the movie was like a whodunit, where we find out that “love” died and we have to guess what killed it.
What I think happened was that Williams got bored of what made her love Gosling in the first place. She was attracted to how much he was devoted to her. As Gosling says later on, all he wants to do is be with his wife and the kids. Williams liked that in the beginning, but somewhere down the line she realized she wanted a guy who was more ambitious than Gosling.
Gosling however, doesn’t know what’s wrong, because Williams understandably doesn’t want to tell him that she no long loves him even though he’s been so devoted to her. I think that drives Gosling to drink, because he can’t figure out what he’s doing wrong. All he can do is beg and plead with Williams to love him again, which doesn’t work. That makes him come across as annoying in the second chronological half of the movie. You wonder why he won’t leave Williams alone if she so clearly doesn’t like him. He doesn’t because he’s still the same guy Williams met. He still loves her and wants to be with her, only now his charms no longer work.
I can’t fault the guy for being the same guy Williams married. I can’t blame Williams either for not knowing that she wouldn’t love Gosling forever. Life sucks sometimes.
I agree with your analysis, but I do fault her. Falling out of love is a reason to dump a boyfriend, not get a divorce. Marriage vows are supposed to mean more than that, even moreso when there’s a kid involved.
That’s a great take Lakai. I can’t add anything to it. I did think that she was smart to take him outside the clinic when he was so clearly drunk and upset, but stupid to turn around and go right back in when he was obviously becoming more unhinged. He was at fault for punching the doctor, but she should have kept him outside.
I was very happy to see Michelle Williams nominated for an Oscar. It’s too bad that Ryan Gosling didn’t, but what can you do.
I had to smile when my husband indicated he wasn’t interested in seeing the movie because it looked depressing, but it’s just about the crumbling of a marriage. That’s all. No one dies, no one gets physically hurt. There’s no domestic violence. The last Ryan Gosling movie we saw, All Good Things, contained domestic violence, as well as murders of humans and animals.
What’s kinda funny about that is that Blue Valentine is much, MUCH more depressing than Rabbit Hole. The core synopsis of Rabbit Hole sounds depressing, couple working through their grief after their son is hit by a car and killed, so I can understand your reasoning, but in fact, Rabbit Hole is more thoughtful than depressing. The movie takes place several months after the accident, which is never shown. The movie starts when they’re in the last stages of profound grief and continues as they’re moving to the next level up, where they can begin living their lives again without every moment of their being consumed by the grief.
Each of them is moving forward (with the occasional step back) in different ways, and the story is more about their relationship and how it survives the grieving process. A lot of marriages don’t survive family tragedies, so it’s actually uplifting to see them try. Plus, they’re at a point where they can try and begin to start letting fun and even joy back into their lives, so there are many humorous moments in the film, which stem from realistic situations and dialogue.
Rabbit Hole is a very very good movie, the acting is off the charts (Nicole Kidman definitely deserves her Oscar nomination) and I highly recommend it. I liked it better than Blue Valentine precisely because it wasn’t as depressing, and I liked Blue Valentine and depressing movies in general quite a bit.