Resembling the narrative of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960), Derek Cianfrance’s The Place Beyond the Pines (2013) makes the audience turn their heads and whisper, “wait… did that really just happen?” As expected, the two films are no further alike. Yet, it is important to note that this movie is not one that heavily relies on Ryan Gosling and his I’m-a-badass-I-don’t-speak-much character, but one that stands on its own and leaves the audience with a powerful, lasting ending.
The film begins with a long tracking shot revealing the muscular back of Luke Glanton (Gosling). Luke is strikingly similar to the driver that Gosling played in his 2011 film, Drive, as if he is simply reborn in the body of a heavily tattooed motorcyclist. This brilliant opening scene stalls on disclosing the star’s face and continues to film his rugged back as he walks into the motorcycle stunt arena. Cianfrance manages to sneak in Gosling’s stuntman into the globe of steel without breaking up the long take, tricking us into briefly thinking that the producers have lost their minds and thrown Gosling into the dangerous globe of death.
Fortunately, the stuntmen are talented and the film has more of Gosling on screen. Well, enough to make the whole movie trailer on him, anyway. This brilliant opening shot onsets an epic tale of two men and their sons, who cross each other’s paths through time and space. The brief yet significant encounter between Luke and cop Avery Cross (Bradley Cooper), results in an intertwining story of corruption of police and family, drugs, violence, vengeance, and legacy. Gently pulled by the slow-beating music, the story unravels in a seemingly slow but rather rapid pace through the fifteen years of time.
Unable to support his newborn son Jason and lover Romina (Eva Mendes), Luke turns from a motorcycle stunt job to bank robbing as an occupation. He, however, fails to become a loving father when his last and most desperate mission goes awry at the hands of Officer Cross. Luke ignores the warning of his friend Robin—which I contend is also the best line of the film: “If you ride like lightning, you’re going to crash like thunder.” So Luke continues to ride.
Officer Cross, on the other hand, connects deeply with Luke who has a one-year-old son like he does. Fast-forwarding fifteen years from the fathers’ encounter, the narrative transitions into the struggles and collision of the two children. AJ Cross is the unfortunate result of his father’s corruption. Officer Cross has exploited the police corruption to rise in status—meanwhile intentionally avoiding his son, who becomes a spoiled druggie by his lack of attention.
AJ moves in with his father, who is now running for New York State Attorney General. In a new school, AJ meets a new friend named Jason. Fate, a force like no other, joins the sons of the two unfortunate men, and the fathers’ legacy is to set to untangle.
Here I ponder, what happened within these fifteen years that led to such irreparable situation? The consequences of the two distinct men and their corruption are the delinquent activities of AJ and Jason, which become too sad and sickening to watch. Were the passionate loves of the mothers not enough to set their paths straight? The evident lack of a true father is detrimental to the behavior of the sons, and whatever happened during the fifteen years of the time that Cianfrance has chosen to skip over, does not seem to be so important as the legacy that Luke and Avery left behind that one day.
The Place Beyond the Pines is a calm degeneration of family and an inevitable cycle through the span of time. “If only” is a question that circles and lingers in my mind long after I left the theaters. But fate is a powerful tool for the director Cianfrance, and there are no “ifs” in his rulebook. Legacy is fate, and there is only one conclusion to his story.
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