BLUE VALENTINE

A few years ago I stopped reading the New Yorker fiction section and began to wonder about the state of mind and marriage of whoever edited that section. Seemingly three years straight, save for the occasional immigrant tale or magical realist African fable, every single story that ran was some horrible, depressing story about the dissolution of a grown-grim marriage or some story about a man being redeemed or undone by an affair or the young sexuality of some mirthful woman–just total Phillip Roth boner-in-sadness excelsior. After about a dozen too many stories that included a 4-page bickering scene, I gave up. I’m a child of divorce, I don’t need a threepeat.

Blue Valentine is surely that editors favorite movie–surely David Denby recommended it. Just a marriage curdling over the course of an hour fifty, with Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams putting a lot into totally cliche characters: disgusted, harried, now-frigid wife who insists on rules and taking a shower by herself, the “fun dad” husband who just loves his family and getting drunk and just wants to do it to her and feel some love goddammit. The break-up is not high drama, it’s dull and relentless and desperate. EGADS IT’S SO DEPRESSING. Though the whole thing was predictable, the arc of it, it’s so not “movie”, it’s much more “your friends gnarly break-up of her ill-fated starter-marriage”. I spent the whole movie shuddering and wondering if I should just turn it off and bargaining with the Lord to never let me be either of these divorcing people. It’s a stone cold bum out from start to finish. I am not sure why anyone would have the sense to watch it unless you are super interested in Michelle WIlliam’s nude bosoms (most everyone). I guess the scene where RG goes down on her was a “big deal” and it originally got an NC17 rating because it was so “real”; RG and MW seem to hold that as a particular point of pride in the two articles I read about the movie. Burgeoning directors take note: Fake pussy eating done so real will get you an Oscar nod! Too bad it doesn’t go the other way, as the Chloe Sevigny bj scene in Brown Bunny still haunts her career to this day.

I googled up some factoids on the movie and apparently Ryan Gosling, as directed by the director, tried to get on Michelle Williams during filming so that his sense of rejection would be palpable (!). ALSO: and they both lived in a house with the six-yr-old that plays their daughter in the film and like, did dishes and lived as poor as they would be if they were their characters and apparently the struggle of real domesticity undid them, and they crossed over into their characters pain. Method acting/prole life pretend apparently busted their seams as humans! I feel bad for the six year old, who’d want to play along with that? Stuck in some house in Scranton for what–weeks, days, hours even?–listening to the fake actorly fighting over money and chores. Imagine that’s yr first grade summer, your big intro acting. When I was six and I wanted to be in a movie it was because of the movie musical Annie. Imagine that girl was thinking that being in a movie was going to be something between Little Mermaid and a Harry Potter movie, or some such fun, but, instead, it’s just weeks of watching Ryan Gosling simper in sexual discontent and try to get punching a wall just right.