Blue Valentine

Some believe in love at first sight and for Dean (played by Ryan Gosling) this is what happens when he sees Cindy (played by Michelle Williams) for the first time. While working at a moving company, Dean sees Cindy at a home for the elderly and from that point on he pursues her. With a whirlwind romance that boarders on a fairy tale story, the young couple go from a first meeting to being married with a daughter. Now that the two have been together for a few years the romance is fading, Dean is drinking in the early morning, and Cindy no longer knows how she feels about Dean. Will a night alone away from their daughter help salvage their relationship? Neither knows but both give it a shot and by the morning they will find out where they stand with each other.

My Thoughts on the Plot:
I was a little bored with this movie and let down with it. From all the hype I was hearing about it, having friends that saw it and was insisting that I see it, to one friend telling me on multiple occasions that he wanted to see it, and then reading the tag line on the Blu Ray case of “The most provocative film of the year”, I figured this movie would just be mind blowing. Well, it wasn’t and after watching it I just don’t get what the hype was for in this movie.

Nothing new is done with this movie, the plot is one that has been done many times before and it will be done in the future as well. It’s a plot that centers on a married couple that at the beginning things seem to be good but by the end of the movie it’s realized that there isn’t going to be a fairy tale ending here. ‘Blue Valentine’ is about this couple that has a husband that is having fun with his life and his relationship with his wife and daughter that he never notices how his wife is falling out of love with him. In a last ditch effort he rents a hotel room to try to rekindle the flame they had when they were young.

As I said, nothing new, not even the way it’s edited is new. ‘Blue Valentine’ starts with the characters already years into the marriage where the husband is happy and the wife is not. From that point on the flow of the movie jumps from the past to the present to show how the couple went from first meeting to falling in love to ending up in the hotel room that will let them know how if there’s enough love to rebuild between them.

What I liked About Blue Valentine:
Being that this was a Blu Ray how it looks on my television was really nice. Pictures are clear, the colors are sharp, and the detail that is able to be seen in this movie is amazing. Though, those are aspects of a Blu Ray that I come to expect to get and I wasn’t denied them. I was also pleased that the disc included some deleted scenes but not that many.

Aside from the way the movie looked, I did like the performance given by Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams. Both of them do a good job in making me feel sad for both of them and how they no longer have that flame they once had when young. It’s not anywhere near a performance that would deserve awards or being called best acting, but the duo shows a lot of emotion in their acting. I did find the make up that was done on the character Dean to show how he had aged was really good. Having him go from this young guy to this older guy that is loosing his hair was about the best aspect of the movie.

All that I Didn’t Like About Blue Valentine:
There are more portions about this movie that I don’t like over the ones that I did. Namely the speed of the movie, it’s way too slow. It takes nearly hour and half to get to the point that this is a movie about a couple that is having problems where only one of them knows they are having problems. Not good when the movie is only an hour and 52 minutes long. ‘Blue Valentine’ shouldn’t be a quick movie, but there needed to be more to it than what there is and it should have had a quicker pace to it.

What I disliked the most though was that I couldn’t really figure out what the problem was between the characters. At the beginning things seem to be fine, the father loves his kid, the kid loves the parents, and the wife has a job that she loves to do. Then it’s shown that the married couple is not so happy, but why? I just don’t know for certain. At one point it’s mentioned that the character Cindy don’t like that Dean is drinking in the morning but aside from that one thing I couldn’t see what would make the relationship fall apart. Dean is not beating her, he’s not going out getting sloppy drunk, he loves his wife, don’t cheat, does great with the daughter, so I couldn’t figure out what was the problem. Then at the end of the movie the characters problems turn for the worse and that’s when Dean is shown to be a little too head strong and won’t allow Cindy to talk but it’s at the end. I don’t know if he’s always been this way or if he’s just done this because things are coming to an end and he has no idea what else to do.

It’s because of not really getting this connection with either of the characters that I couldn’t feel for either of them. I didn’t know if I should feel bad for Cindy for having to deal with a bad husband, or feel sad for Dean whose wife no longer loves him even though he has tried to make things work.

Last Thought:
I just wasn’t that impressed with ‘Blue Valentine’. With it’s sad story, a plot that shows how a couple can easily drift apart, and actors that can show the emotions of the characters, I was wanting this movie to be good. But with editing that makes the movie move along too slow, the plot not giving enough away, and catalyst to show when things started to fall apart, ‘Blue Valentine’ made me bored with watching it.