Fathers and sons in Upstate N.Y.

The Place Beyond the Pines has powerful moments, but doesn't always add up.
Just about anyone who sees director Derek Cianfrance's The Place Beyond the Pines should agree that Cianfance is a talented and ambitious filmmaker. Cianfrance's third feature -- a look at three generations of men in downtrodden Schenectady, N.Y. -- has moments that pulsate with the energy of a filmmaker driven to infuse his story with vividly realized life.

If you had a chance to meet Cianfrance (as I have on several occasions dating back to 1998), you'd know that he's a principled filmmaker who tries (and often succeeds) to wring hard-won truth from every moment in this films.

Co-written with Ben Coccio and Darius Marder, Cianfrance's latest movie has plenty to recommend it, even though it can't quite match the ambition that went into creating what the director calls a "triptych," a look at the impact of fathers on sons in three loosely related acts.

The movie's shortcomings can be attributed to a bit of imaginative depletion in its second act, to a casting misstep in its third, and, perhaps to a generalized over-emphasis on authenticity of milieu, sometimes at the expense of enduring insight.

That's not to say that Cianfrance's achievement is negligible. There's enough good work in The Place Beyond the Pines (the Mohawk name for Schenectady) to make it a worthy follow-up to Cianfrance's widely praised Blue Valentine. For the most part, Cianfrance finds ways to encourage his cast to plunge headlong into risky emotional terrain.

Like Blue Valentine, The Place Beyond the Pines benefits from the presence of Ryan Gosling, who this time plays Luke, a heavily tattooed motorcycle stunt rider who -- during an annual visit to Schenectady with a carnival -- learns that he has a son with a woman (Eva Mendes) with whom he had a fling.

With the movie's bravura opening shot, Cianfrance makes it clear that Luke's life is going nowhere. We follow Luke into a metal cage where he rides his motorcycle in circles, a death defying carnival stunt that serves as a metaphor for a life of trapped fury.

When Luke learns that he has a son, he quits the carnival and commits himself to taking care of the boy, a task for which he's ill-suited.

At a loss about how to function in "normal" life, Luke's future changes when he meets Robin (a scary Ben Mendelsohn), a mechanic who introduces Luke to the fine art of bank robbery. Luke enters banks, robs them and speeds away on his motorcycle. He eludes police by driving his bike into Robin's waiting truck, and disappearing from the roads.

Cianfrance, who likes to work in comfort-shattering close-ups, keeps this section of the movie percolating, right up until its violent conclusion.

This portion of movie benefits in no small part from Gosling's trademark edginess, as well from strong work by Mendelsohn (familiar from the brilliant Australian neo-noir Animal Kingdom). Equally good are Mendes and Mahershala Ali, who plays the man who lives with Mendes's Romina. Unlike Luke, Kofi has more than fantasy ideas about how to care for a son.

The movie's second section features a strong performance by Bradley Cooper, most recently seen in Sliver Linings Playbook. Cooper, who made Beyond the Pines prior to Silver Linings Playbook, plays a Schenectady cop who becomes a DA and who later runs for the office of New York attorney general. A confrontation with Luke brings him into the story.

Bradley's good, but the movie loses imaginative steam as it immerses itself in what seems an overly familiar story about police corruption that features an appearance by a menacing Ray Liotta, who portrays Deluca, a cop who introduces Cooper's Avery to the world of corruption.

In this second segment, the screenplay raises issues of betrayal, ambition and guilt that don't break much new ground, but allow Cianfrance to sustain a mood of encroaching dread.

Some of the late-picture problems result from a crucial piece of miscasting. In the third act, Emory Cohen portrays Avery's son AJ, a high school kid who has adopted the linguistic style of a wannabe gangsta. It's not easy to believe that he's the son of an aspiring politician and of his mother, a minimally seen Rose Byrne. Cohen's performance proves distracting enough to undermine some of the movie's credibility.

Cianfrance does better with Luke's son, played by the gifted Dane DeHaan, who you may have seen in a segment of HBO's In Treatment. DeHaan captures the turmoil of a high school kid who's beginning to confront difficult truths about his family history.

It would not be fair to say that The Place Beyond the Pines unravels in the late going. But it can't afford the loss of credibility that accompanies its melodramatic and somewhat self-conscious conclusion.

Cianfrance can't entirely sustain the movie's intensity over its two hour- and 20-minute length, and the screenplay probably could have benefited from a healthy dose of nuance. I hope, by now, you've gotten the point: The Place Beyond the Pines is far from perfect, but when Cianfrance connects, he tends to connect in a big way.

A marriage gone hopelessly wrong

Director Derek Cianfrance's Blue Valentine is fueled by raw emotion.

In Blue Valentine, director Derek Cianfrance does what director John Cassavetes sometimes did: He pushes his actors toward what feel like breaking points, putting them in emotionally charged situations and allowing them to claw their way out – or not.
This look at both the beginning and end of a blue-collar marriage contains moments so potent they seem to put the movie’s principal actors – Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling – at emotional risk. For much of the movie, Williams and Gosling are suspended in the uncharted waters of a turbulent present that neither of their characters fully comprehends.

Cianfrance does this by shattering the usual narrative flow of a story. He shows us the beginning of the relationship and its end, omitting the middle. He also avoids smooth transitions from one time period to another, allowing scenes from the past and present to bump against each other in ways that take some adjustment, and – at least in the early going – create mild confusion.

At heart, Cianfrance’s movie is about two people who enter marriage with totally different expectations. Gosling’s Dean believes it’s possible to be thunderstruck by one woman, so much so that he’ll decide he must spend the rest of his life with her.

Obstacles don’t necessarily matter to Dean. He’s working for a moving company in Brooklyn. Cindy – the woman who ignites Dean’s passion -- lives in Pennsylvania. He knows nothing about her, and she knows nothing about him. No matter; he’s got a feeling.

Besides being hopelessly naïve, Dean’s approach causes him to ignore a lot of warning signs, and puts him in an awkward position: Once he achieves his goal, there’s nothing left. He’s without aspiration.

For scenes set in the present, Gosling has trimmed his hair to create a receding hairline and put on weight. Six years into marriage, Dean is contented being a house painter. His idea of a relationship-renewing experience involves checking into a tacky motel in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania, getting drunk with his wife and spending the rest of the evening having sex. He knows the motel is silly, but doesn’t care. He’s ready to enjoy the silliness.

Dean’s life plan might have worked, except for one thing. Cindy no longer shares it, if she ever did. After being charmed by Dean, who has an unashamedly goofy streak, she marries him in a moment of weakness and need, a psychological state suggested by plot details best discovered in a theater.

When we first meet them, Cindy and Dean are already on the downside of their marital arc. They live in Pennsylvania. Cindy works as a nurse for a doctor who bolsters her self-esteem. She’s beginning to wonder whether she can get more out of life. Dean plays with their daughter Frankie (Faith Wladyaka); he works; he drinks beer; he’s living his dream; Cindy’s living his nightmare.

In one of the earliest scenes, the fully clothed Dean has fallen asleep in a living room chair, where he’s presumably spent the better part of the night. Frankie is out looking for the family’s missing dog. Cindy remains in bed. Clearly, the family is not operating with the greatest possible synchronicity.

Both Williams and Gosling face difficult challenges. A movie such as Blue Valentine demands that its actors respond with what must appear to be unrehearsed immediacy. Each character has been given some history, but Williams and Gosling pretty much are disconnected from the logical supports traditional narratives provide.

This can be powerful, but it also can look strange and a touch unconvincing. When Dean courts Cindy with a ukulele, he croons a silly version of You Always Hurt the One You Love, and asks her to dance to it. They’re on the street, tucked into the entranceway of a small store in her Pennsylvania hometown. The moment has wacky charm, yes, but it’s also self-consciously dippy.

And when Dean – during another courtship segment – tries to force Cindy to tell him a secret, he climbs over the railing of a fence on the Brooklyn Bridge, presumably threatening to leap if Cindy doesn’t reveal her secret. Gosling has said that he climbed the fence, waiting anxiously for Williams to capitulate so that he could come down. Two actors challenging each other to see how far each will go generates a certain kind of theatrical excitement, but it doesn’t necessarily equate with believable behavior.

The sex scenes in Blue Valentine are explicit, and initially resulted in an NC-17 rating, since overturned to give the movie an R, which seems more in line with the content and context that Cianfrance establishes. “R” is the right rating, and Blue Valentine certainly is worth seeing – for its performances, for the nearly palpable -- if sometimes strained -- commitment to truth seeking that seems to underlie every scene and for the director’s willingness to condense the narrative in hopes that he’ll find something essential.

Maybe it’s just this: Once someone checks out of a marriage, the relationship is doomed. Cindy pretty much has given up on Dean. She’s sold her emotional stock in the relationship. Poor Dean. From that point on, all he can do is make matters worse.