I've been pondering this for a while now, and I've been finding it a bit difficult to work out exactly what I thought about this film. Certainly, it's thought provoking, emotive and affecting, and carries fantastic performances from its leads Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling. It moved me to the brink of tears and was rumbling around inside my head for hours afterward.
But I don't know if I actually liked it. It's definitely not the sort of film you enjoy - it deals with issues too raw and close to the bone, and in too personal a way to be able to say that. I think I felt as though I was waiting for something to click for me.
It's not that the film is badly made - not at all. The cinematography is subtle but stirring, the dialogue and performances are strikingly realistic and unsentimental. The film is structured so as to juxtapose flashbacks of the beginnings of their relationship with the present quagmire of dissatisfaction, confusion and bleakness that it has become. As the film progresses, we see their relationship in the present day fall apart, crumble and become more and more lost, intercut with their younger selves fall more and more in love. We end with flashbacks of their wedding day - where they're the epitome of young love - side by side with the seemingly irretrievable breakdown of their marriage.
From this point of view, Blue Valentine is interesting as a piece of filmic art. Emotionally, it engaged me enough that I felt a rather visceral response to the film, but I couldn't quite figure out what that response was. Sad for what they'd come to, sad that they were on different pages, sad that the romantic potential they seemed to have had somehow been squandered and spent. Maybe sad at the idea that that's how all relationships can go, if you aren't careful? I'm really not sure.
Maybe that was the point of the film - that things aren't clear cut the way we sometimes want them to be. That life doesn't have the structure of stories as we're used to seeing them on screen; it just is. The film was the writer-director Derek Cianfrance's exploration of his fears over his own parents' divorce, so maybe it's not surprising, then, that the naturalistic qualities of the film extend to the point where you don't come away with a clear-cut sense of what just went on in front of you and how you felt about it. Because that's very often not how life is, especially in it's darkest and most traumatic of moments.
All things considered, it's a deeply compelling and enthralling film. My uncertainties about my reaction to it absolutely are not meant to take anything away from the film. That it can linger with me for so long and still give pause for thought, and make me want to see it again to consider other angles and elements that are maybe only now coming to mind, is a good thing. It's most definitely worth seeing, I can say that without any hesitation. But maybe don't make it a Valentine's date.
Blue Valentine opens tomorrow (Friday 4th February) at the QFT, Belfast. If you dander over to their website to book your tickets, use the code ORLA10 for discount.
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