The Place Beyond The Pines

[modage]

Still unforgivable though.

[jenkins]

funny and dazzling that 'unforgivable' feels like a thematic link to the movie. mmmmmm

[Cloudy]

Interestingly enough To The Wonder has the same song. But Pines uses it way more obviously. It even has that DONNNGG at the end like TWBB. This movie has been getting the wrong advertising (as if it's like Drive when it's not at all), and weird hate. This Cianfrance guy is the real deal I think.

*yup, Matt is right. Not from Greenwood's stuff. Didn't know that. That's probably why Malick used it as well.

[Tictacbk]

This movie wants to be about regret, guilt, consequences, sons and fathers, and maybe even coincidence (sound familiar?) but doesn't take the time to actually be about any of that.  It never sits and breathes with any of these moments and instead breezes by them as if they're on some sort of checklist, like "Ok Bradley Cooper talked about not being able to look his kid in the eye, whats next?  Oh right, dirty cop stuff!"  As a result, it ends up feeling like a first draft that was packed with ideas and never revised or ironed out.  There's like 10 films in here but we only get snippets of each one and it ends up feeling like a jumbled meaningless mess.

[modage]

This movie will age like "Boondock Saints" btw so let's just preserve this thread for posterity.

[socketlevel]

This movie will age like "Boondock Saints" btw so let's just preserve this thread for posterity.

don't say that! come on now...

[socketlevel]

This movie wants to be about regret, guilt, consequences, sons and fathers, and maybe even coincidence (sound familiar?) but doesn't take the time to actually be about any of that.  It never sits and breathes with any of these moments and instead breezes by them as if they're on some sort of checklist, like "Ok Bradley Cooper talked about not being able to look his kid in the eye, whats next?  Oh right, dirty cop stuff!"  As a result, it ends up feeling like a first draft that was packed with ideas and never revised or ironed out.  There's like 10 films in here but we only get snippets of each one and it ends up feeling like a jumbled meaningless mess.

i think it not sitting and breathing these moments is exactly what makes it good. i'm not totally against your point but having characters talk about their feelings is bad narrative (that we've all come so used to) 101.

[RegularKarate]

I came here expecting nothing but hate, but I'm pretty amazed people here liked this.

Like a really rushed indie version of "Crash". So full of really poorly-written cliches and forced plot devices.
It's so rushed, yet too long.

It's too bad, had some good performances (probably the first time I really thought Bradley Cooper was good in something). Just shows how much a terrible screenplay can ruin a movie.

[Tictacbk]

Even Ryan Gosling saw this movie and decided to quit acting for a while.

[socketlevel]

Like a really rushed indie version of "Crash". So full of really poorly-written cliches and forced plot devices.

that is a really good point, however i do think it's attempting to be much more earnest than the counterpart. but you're right, and the basic premise does work against the film inherently. 

[picolas]

(my letterboxd.com review)

i don't understand what this movie is about.

cianfrance is an excellent actor's director. like blue valentine, every performance has INCREDIBLE life and realness. i want to know his secrets.. how he gets everyone to be so real all the time. Pines is very watchable for that alone. most of the story feels really contrived, like cianfrance just wanted to put his characters in these situations... ryan gosling's character is kind of an idiot/douche. i feel like there's a very slight chance rewatches will make the ideas clearer, and i'm down for another view, but right now this movie as a whole feels like a huge mess of underdeveloped ideas. like, idea after idea after idea isn't necessarily a movie. it's just a lot of stuff that happens.

sweet dirtbike chase though.

BONUS XIXAX OBSERVATIONS:
- i was surprised by how Lynchian some moments were. the whole gosling character feels very Lynchian/purely archetypal/cinematic... almost surreal. the surprise narrative handoff from gosling to cooper to the sons reminded me of Lost Highway, structurally.
- Fratres is a pretty famous bit of music... Meet Joe Black/Thomas Newman ripped it off first i think.. it's definitely getting overused now though.

[Reel]

I think that my favorite part about this was how it's set in Schenectady. I don't see many New York movies that take place outside of the city. The rest of the state seems like such a drab and boring place by comparison, and it is, but I like how Cianfrance used that mundane aspect of the area to contrast how Gosling's character rips through the town like a whirlwind and fucks shit up. Certain shots looked so familiar, I think it's the trees that gave it away. We have very particular ones around here that just become a blanket of green in the summer. I had never seen Upshit New York portrayed so beautifully, the cinemtographer did a great job on that. I'll mostly be rewatching the movie for those parts because they proved to me that you don't have to be in the city to get some cool looking stuff around here.

On the subject of trees...I was wondering about the title. I had expected there to be some 'place' under the 'pines' where Gosling goes to ride his bike and maybe ends up burying some people there, but I don't remember seeing any pines in the movie. Maybe I wasn't being observant enough because there are a few woods scenes... At the end I took it to mean that Luke's son is headed out west, AWAY from the pines? They can grow everywhere, but certainly less in Cali than New York, and from Luke's look he definitely seemed like a Cali kinda guy. So I'll take that as the meaning.

I had many problems with this movie. The entire third act was just shit. I would've been fine with them following around Cooper in the aftermath of the shooting, even if it really is a buzzkill ending, but when those kids show up and befriend eachother it's like "What are we, starting a NEW movie here?" I guess that's what DC was going for with "The sins of the father will be visited upon the son" logic, but the point behind him spending that big of a chunk of screentime on these two douches was totally lost on me. All the sudden I felt like I was watching a TV movie. In the beginning, although I had some major issues with Gosling's acting ( you're not a 'tough guy' ) and Cianfrance's writing in particular, I was still pretty much riveted by it and it was hitting on every cylinder for me. I just wish DC wasn't trying to be so ambitious in making 'more' than a genre film. IT'S A FUCKING GENRE FILM!! can you just wrap it up in a nice little bow where someone dies at the end, but we're left with a glimmer of hope as to what the future holds for them? That sentimental shit was really grating on me, and throwing Dane DeHaan (AKA Mangey Dicaprio) into the mix was like pouring salt in my wound.

In summation, I respect Cianfrance for trying to go above and beyond, but he overshot on this one. Dude needs to learn how to hone a story in. I liked about half of it, parts of it looked very beautiful, Gosling was in top goofy form. I'll watch it again for how awesome the first part is, but I doubt the director's pandering to the audience at the end will gain any profundity the second time. He was obviously trying to sidestep genre cliche's by doing something different, more meaningful than that. Well, sorry dude. You failed.

[matt35mm]

On the subject of trees...I was wondering about the title. I had expected there to be some 'place' under the 'pines' where Gosling goes to ride his bike and maybe ends up burying some people there, but I don't remember seeing any pines in the movie. Maybe I wasn't being observant enough because there are a few woods scenes... At the end I took it to mean that Luke's son is headed out west, AWAY from the pines? They can grow everywhere, but certainly less in Cali than New York, and from Luke's look he definitely seemed like a Cali kinda guy. So I'll take that as the meaning.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenectady,_New_York

"Schenectady" is derived from a Mohawk word that means "place beyond the pines."

[Lottery]

VARIOUS SPOILS

Okay, I quite liked the first two thirds of this film for the most part. Though by the time it was half-way through Cooper's section, the movie started feeling kind of fake somehow. The saddest thing about this film was how it fell apart in the final third.

I really like the idea behind it all, the whole fathers and sons thing but the last chunk of the film really did not do justice to the concept.
There were some parts that worked pretty well on a emotional and dramatic level though. In terms of pacing, the film seemed to get faster and faster which really made the later sections weaker.

Also, I couldn't stop thinking that Bradley Cooper Jr was just Bradley's Cooper's douchebag half-brother or something. And boy was he a douchebag.