 |
| Visit and join our new Facebook page! |
When I was younger, one of my best friends
lived next to an empty house which we'd all been told was haunted. Out of
everybody who knew about it though, only one boy claimed to have seen the ghost
and even then, we knew he was full of crap. He was younger than us and clearly his brain hadn't quite found that sweet
spot of being imaginative and yet still believable, because his description of
what he'd seen was complete fucking bollocks. He said the ghost was of a giant
that was also a witch and that it had sharp teeth and it could fly and it had
claws and it had four arms and nine legs and blah, blah, fucking blah.
Basically, he used the word “and” so much that it was obvious he'd gotten
carried away on the enthusiasm of his own bullshit. Have you read the
description of the Devil in the Bible? It's basically the same deal! When I was
a kid, we got the good book given to us for free and so naturally the section
on the anti-Christ was the only bit I bothered with. Anyway, he sounded equally
as stupid with the same mix of imagination and lack of believability. The Devil
has twelve horns and fire in his eyes and three tails and balls the size of the
moon and a tongue like a Whales dick and YES- I GET THE POINT. HE'S A FUCKING
MONSTER! Anyway, so to summarise, I
guess that's probably what I thought about The Place Beyond The Pines...
For those who don't know the plot of that
film, I'll have a go at summarising it for you now... Okay... so, deep
breath... and... So there's this stunt driver and he starts to rob banks and
there's a policeman and he chases him and he wants to be promoted and he gets
wrapped up in some corruption thing and there's a couple of kids and one of
them is a mega-twat and one is a potential twat and they start hanging out and
they buy some drugs and, and, and... and fuck me, this film is pretty epic.
When this movie started and having seen the trailers, I was expecting some
traditional cat and mouse bullshittery between Ryan Gosling's Bank Robber and
Bradley Cooper's cop. What I actually got though was some fucking dementedly
sprawling epic that spans decades and deals with themes of guilt, consequence,
morality, responsibility, fathers, sons and sins being passed down through
generations. Like the ghost next door to my friend and the description of the
devil in the bible, it's as though the filmmakers just got so fucking giddy
about all of their ideas that they couldn't pick a favourite and so just
thought ‘fuck it- lets just make them all at once’.
 |
| Drive 2: Skank Harder |
Anyway, so I guess I should mention the
films structure, which came as a bit of a surprise to me. Contrary to what you
might suspect, you're essentially getting three separate films in this, which
are linked through coincidence and theme. In fact, by the time of the credits,
I kind of felt like I'd watched a fucking HBO mini-series. Season one deals
with Gosling’s bank robber, season two is Bradley Cooper’s one good cop trying
to survive amongst the corruption, and season three is a couple of shitty kids
bonding over a love of frowning. Like I say, the whole thing ends up feeling a
little contrived but I think it just about gets away with it thanks to its sheer
bat-shit ambition. In fact, one of the things that this film reminded me of,
beyond the Devil and an imaginary ghost, was the Wachowski's and Tom Tykwer's Cloud
Atlas. Both films rely on coincidences but manage to do so without me
throwing a chair at the screen through annoyance because of their general
mythic quality. The Place Beyond The Pines might superficially seem like
quite a grounded film, but its reliance on archetypes and the importance of
fate do give it a more fable-esque feel. Quite what the moral is, I'm not
entirely sure although I guess it could either be that what goes around comes around
or even more simply that most people are fucking idiots.
 |
| You're never too young to check out Eva Mendes' tits! |
The differences between Blue Valentine and
The Place Beyond The Pines might seem jarring at first, but to be fair
there are similarities. Like I mentioned before though, both films take a
magnifying glass and shove it up the arse of its main characters to ensure that
we don't miss any nuance of the performance. Both also span several decades to
show how much of a balls-up in the past might fester with time and end up
fucking everybody in the head. Both also kind of deal with the American Dream,
by contrasting it with the shitness of our real waking life. In both films, the
characters just want to provide for their families and enjoy just a modest
slice of happiness, and in all cases they're shown just how turd being alive
can be. I really enjoyed The Place Beyond The Pines and although there's
a big bit of me that thinks it doesn't quite hang together as one cohesive
piece, there's another that's just so in awe of its ambition that I really
don't care. If I have any criticism, other than the contrivance of season three,
it is perhaps that, of all three series, the first is by far my favourite.
However the fact that it had the balls to just change story a third of the way
in was refreshing enough that from that point on I had no idea where the film
was going. If you've not seen this film then I recommend that you check it out,
and if you already have then fuck-a-doodle-do for you. I hope you enjoyed it as
much as I did and if not, I'm happy to argue with you about why you're wrong.
Anyway, thanks for reading and see you next time, motherfuckers.
You can also visit the blog picture artist at _Moriendus_
this movie bored me.
ReplyDeleteWhat about it did you find boring?
Delete