30 for 30 — 2012: "The Place Beyond the Pines"
"If you ride like lightning, you're going to crash like thunder."
What’s this all about? I turned 30 on Sept. 26, 30 days from the start of this series. To celebrate, I’m watching one movie a day for 30 days and spending 30 minutes writing about each one. This post is about 2012. Click here for the original newsletter in the series. Other entries: 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011
“The Place Beyond the Pines” is an epic of biblical proportions, concerned with nothing less than the ways fathers and sons impact each other over generations. It’s big, it’s ambitious and it runs right up to the line of incredulous, pretentious audacity before quietly walking back into something real and earned.
It’s a triptych, a story divided into three different perspectives that spans 15 years. That split narrative structure is hard to pull off, and “Place” is only one of two films I’ve ever seen that properly nails that formula (the cop drama “Monsters and Men” gets it right; “Waves” is just pretentious). “Pines” avoids the thin characterization that might plague films of this type by leaning hard into its themes of redemption, legacy, paternity and family for each chapter.
Those themes are embodied by Luke (Ryan Gosling), a carnival motorcycle stuntman who turns to a life of robbing banks to provide for his son once he realizes he fathered a child with Romina (Eva Mendes); his bank robbing mentor Robin (Ben Mendelsohn); Avery (Bradley Cooper), the rookie cop who ends up shooting and killing Luke after Luke robs one bank too many; Avery’s own father, a pragmatic city judge who knows Avery is more like him than even Avery realizes; Kofi (Mahershala Ali), Jason’s adoptive father; and teenage Jason (Dane DeHaan) and Avery Junior (Emory Cohen), whose lives end up intertwined with each other long after Luke and Avery first cross paths.
Cooper is especially good here as a man desperately trying to prove his worth and unwittingly boxing himself in wherever he finds himself. This is a role he’s not often recognized for, and he should be; one can easily see the “Star is Born” actor trying to leap out after a few years of doing “Hangover” comedies. Gosling is also great, mostly acting as a silent cipher here shortly after doing the same thing in “Drive.” And Mendelsohn steals the show whenever he’s in a scene — but when is that not the case?
There’s a lot to examine here about masculinity, what it means to truly be a man and how we pass those ideas on to our own sons. And, again, there’s a lot here that works so well for me because the story told here isn’t new — fathers, sons and their legacies have been stories in modern culture since Abraham and Isaac and the whole Old Testament. “Place” is like “East of Eden” in that way. It’s epic, concerned with other heavy notions like nature vs. nurture, the way we constantly revise our own stories as a way to craft our own legacies (Avery’s official account of the “shootout” he had with Luke is far different from what actually happened, and he knows it, and he’s forever haunted by it), the ways we fight who we are, only to end up becoming who we were always going to be (Avery becomes just as calculated as his own father even as he tries to do some semblance of good in the world later in life; Jason turns to a life of crime even as Kofi provides him with a stable home life, etc.) and the very biblical notion of the sins of the father coming home to roost sooner or later (the entire third act of the movie).
But more than anything, “Place” is about how one quick moment can end up defining your whole life. One split-second decision can have ramifications that last lifetimes— not just yours, but your children, possibly your children’s children. And the characters in “Pines” all seem like they’re one moment away from everything crashing down on them, or everything working out in their favor.
Robin tells Luke “If you ride like lightning, you're going to crash like thunder." The storm that Luke and Avery caused goes on for generations, but once that storm clears, Jason is able to truly be free. The final moments of the film bring everything full-circle in a poetic way, providing retroactive redemption for the generations that came before. Ultimately, I think “Place Beyond the Pines” is hopeful above anything else.
Up next: A star-studded cast makes its debut in 2013’s “Short Term 12.”
Letter of Recommendation
More reading on “Place Beyond the Pines” can be found here, at Bright Wall/Dark Room.
That’s all, folks. If you liked what you saw here, click that subscribe button (promise I won’t send any annoying emails) and tell all your friends!
This newsletter is written by me and edited by my favorite person, Taylor Tompkins. Views expressed here are my own and don’t reflect the opinions of my employer, yadda yadda yadda.
If there’s anything you want to see covered in a future newsletter, let me know!
You can find me in other corners of the internet as well, if you so choose. There’s my personal website (which focuses on pop culture, faith and my journalism clips), a Twitter account and a Letterboxd account. Subscribe away.