Blue Valentine

Blue Valentine follows the unraveling of a marriage interspersed with flashbacks to the, happier, beginning of the the relationship (and also features the most disconcerting sex scene since A History of Violence). These type of films, with overwhelmingly bleak subject matter, are really tough for me to evaluate. They are unsurprisingly going to be intense and induce strong emotional reactions, but this could be happening independent of the film's actual quality. In order to make it worth my time to watch something that is just inherently harsh there has to be something more that makes it worthwhile, otherwise I just kind of wonder what the point is. I feel the same way after watching Kevin James' films but at least there you have the mocking factor, and only experience a little more soul-crushing despair.

Allow me a digression that hopefully better illustrate my point. I'm currently reading this novel called 'Lullabies for Little Criminals.' The story is told from the point of view of a twelve year old girl whose parents had her when they were fifteen, mom died soon after childbirth, and she is now living with her junkie dad who has tuberculosis. Her life then continues to get worse after that (including stints in foster homes, juvie, turning tricks as a thirteen year old, not to mention a little ride on the H-Train). Anyway if all the book offered was a chronicle of a really screwed up childhood I'd probably have quit already. However the characters are richly developed, language lyrical, and the whole thing just feels incredibly observant. As a result the story is sad (often overwhelmingly so) but never feels bleak. More importantly it doesn't feel like the author is making everything so sad just to show that she can. Rather she's telling an story that also happens to be sad (the ending may be upbeat, haven't gotten there yet). Too often it feels like people creating films/books/tv shows strive to come up with the most hard core depressing scenario possible just to show that they can. I'm not saying everything has to have a happy ending (indeed it would be boring if it did) but if you're going to make me sit through an incredibly disconcerting scenario you need to use the setting to get at something deeper to justify the discomfort.

So does Blue Valentine do this? I'm still not sure. The performances are undeniably strong and I really enjoyed the score, but the key thing that it does right is convincingly illustrate how these two people who currently can't live together actually ended up married. If they hadn't have been able to do that then I would'e written the whole thing off. As it is, the film manages to be a realistic portrayal of the end of a marriage which manages to avoid beating you over the head with its subtext until the very end. You'll just have to decide if that sounds appealing to watch.