Review: The Place Beyond The Pines ★★★★

The Place Beyond The Pines is Derek Cianfrance's latest offering, after the hugely successful Blue Valentine, and it is nothing if not ambitious. The small town of Schenectady is the setting for the film and, with its name synonymous in the Mohawk language with the title, it epitomises the poetic free flow of the film. 

The film is divided into three distinctive chapters, but with subtle themes of morality and fatherhood undercurrent throughout. In the opening chapter, Ryan Gosling captures the audience with a breathtakingly good performance as Luke Glanton, the strutting stunt rider devoid of sentiment, who is thrust into fatherhood with no warning. His brief fling with Romina (also played brilliantly by Eva Mendes), when he was last in Schenectady yielded a son, Jason, whose existence is only discovered by Luke when the boy is 6 months old. Eager to show Romina that he can be a father to the boy, Luke sacrifices his drifter lifestyle and takes a job at a garage run by the hillbilly Robin (Ben Mendelsohn). With poor wages and a desperate desire to provide for his son, Luke uses his remarkable talent on a motorcycle to rob banks, with Robin's guidance. 

Bradley Cooper's character Avery Cross is the primary subject of the second chapter, and he is a character troubled by many of the same problems as Luke but in a very different setting. He is also the father of a young son and after being thrust into the limelight as a local police hero, under rather suspect circumstances  he finds himself embroiled in a web of corruption and guilt over his false hero status. It's a storyline that closely parallels Luke's, just in different circumstances; with both men struggling with moral ambiguity in their lives as they seek to do right by themselves and their sons. 

The final chapter in this noir tale whisks us fifteen years into the future, where a lot has changed. Avery is running for attorney general over the state of New York but is divorced and has an exceptionally strained relationship with his son, for reasons easily deducible from the previous chapter. Avery's son, AJ (Emory Cohen), has grown up and has turned into an incredibly disturbed, rebellious teenager due to the lack of attention gifted him him by his father. AJ, rather unwittingly, befriends Jason (Dane DeHaan), who mirrors Luke in his drifting, stoner attitude. This chapter was a clever and cyclical end to the film but with the two young actors taking the lead, the film begins to suffer. Both the young men have fantastic careers ahead of them but they were taking over late into the film and having to follow two outstanding performances from both Gosling and Cooper. 

Ultimately, this film is overlong and interest begins to wane towards the end. Arguably, a lot of respect for this film comes from what Derek Cianfrance was attempting to do, rather than what he actually succeeded in doing. Nevertheless, the film is helped along by acting masterclasses from the big names in Gosling, Cooper, Mendes, and a spectacularly sinister turn from Ray Liotta as a 'crooked cop' deserves a mention. In spite of its flaws, Cianfrance has still managed to create a beautifully moving and emotionally charged film that effortlessly dives into, and deals with, evocative themes like masculinity, fatherhood and guilt, with complete class.