While I agree that I prefer to feel good at the end of a film, I enjoyed the journey to the end much more. The overall tone is a factor, but it’s not the only factor. If you leave off the “Autumn” ending to (500) Days of Summer, it’s still a more enjoyable film.
Further, I’d say that we understand both Tom and Summer much better by the end of the film than we understand Dean and Cindy. They’re telling different stories, but I think the craft of telling the story is better in (500) Days of Summer. That’s my primary objection to Blue Valentine, not the negative ending. I’ve seen lots of films with negative endings which I enjoyed more.
I understand what you’re saying, and I agree with your assessment of the two relationships and what we know of the couples in the two movies. It’s certainly true that there is more of a difference between the films than overall tone. The tone, perhaps, didn’t have that much of an impact on you, but I wouldn’t discount it as something insubstantial to the overall appeal of each film. I felt that Tom & Summer were portrayed as far more sympathetic characters and their personalities and motivations seemed clear-cut in comparison to Cindy & Dean, for instance. The narrative in I Days of Summer[/I] gave us that much more insight into what was going on, too. Perhaps that goes back to the “craft” objection you raised? I Days of Summer[/I] told the audience exactly what it was: “This is a story of boy meets girl, but you should know upfront, this is not a love story.” Blue Valentine did not. Where the former showed you major steps along the entire journey of Tom & Summer’s relationship, the latter did not. Yet I felt that the craft of storytelling in each worked for me.
I don’t think we are disagreeing on anything substantial, truly. It’s a matter of what we each find effective in storytelling techniques, character design, and perhaps even stylistic choices.
I rewatched Revolutionary Road last weekend and realized it’d probably make a good comparison with Blue Valentine. Where Blue Valentine skipped showing the disintegration of Cindy & Dean’s relationship, Revolutionary Road made it fairly clear that April felt trapped while Frank settled. Interestingly, that same argument came up between Cindy & Dean in Blue Valentine. This statement by Dean could have been coming from Frank’s mouth: “I didn’t want to be somebody’s husband and I didn’t want to be somebody’s dad, that wasn’t my goal in life. But somehow it was.”
Anyone else feel the similarities between the two movies? The discussion with Gus, above, made me wonder if Revolutionary Road’s style of storytelling was more effective for people than Blue Valentine’s.
It’s been a while since I’ve seen Revolutionary Road, so I don’t recall it well enough to discuss it intelligently. The main thing I remember about it is that the two of them felt they were “special” while in fact, they weren’t. Their angst was mostly self-inflicted; there wasn’t much actually wrong with their lives except their inflated expectations of what they were “supposed” to be.
The way I see it, it’s very obvious the relationship was busted from the very beginning and the “skipping” to the end is merely a fastforward to display the end result of the incompatibility after years of built up tension. The couple had fundamental barriers that were overlooked for so long only because of chance and circumstance that resulted in poor decision making.
I’ve not seen Revolutionary Road, but I just wanted to note that the quote above isn’t quite right. It’s something more like “I wasn’t looking to be somebody’s husband, I wasn’t looking to be somebody’s dad, that wasn’t my goal in life; but that turned out to be what I wanted.”
And I think there’s a pretty clear case to be made for both parents contributing to the dissolution of their marriage. Sure, Cindy’s withdrawing, turning Dean down for sex, etc, etc, but there’s no sense to me that either of the other guys that figure in the movie are pulling her away from the marriage. In fact, she’s pretty emphatic to both of them that she’s married and she’s not going to go there. Meanwhile, sure, Dean is a good dad and seems to still genuinely love Cindy on some level, but he’s also very critical of her throughout the movie. Consider when he nags her about her seatbelt, or his reaction to the news of the dog’s death (“How many times did I tell you to lock the gate?”). He gets on her case about the slightest misspeech and won’t leave her alone about stuff she’s trying to drop. (We can see signs of this as early as her telling him she’s pregnant.)
In the kitchen scene at the end, I think it’s interesting to note that when Dean brings up Frankie, both parents seem to be reacting to their own childhood trauma. Cindy can’t think of anything worse than subjecting Frankie to a household where her parents fight constantly, and Dean doesn’t want to leave Frankie minus one parent, like him.
Edit: You know, the more I think about it, the more I think the bit about the dog is really the unforgivable bit. Nothing about Dean’s visit to Cindy’s place of work is well advised or thought through, but it feels like a mostly understandable move from someone who’s confused and upset and has just been ditched by his wife virtually without explanation after the complete failure of what was supposed to be a romantic evening. But when a beloved family pet dies - and your wife has just found the corpse - you do NOT fucking respond by telling her it’s all her fault. No. Uh-uh.
Really? People like 500 days of summer more? Okay, opinions and all that, but it still baffles me. Summer is a nice, fleeting little movie that’s a decent way to spend a night with some friends, but Blue Valentine is a movie of soaring, often uncomfortable ferocity. And as cute as Deschannel and JGL are, their characters feel like teenagers, especially in comparison to the young courtship Gosling and Williams had.
I feel like Clive Owen in ‘Closer’ explaining to Julia Roberts (Blue Valentine) why he would never leave her for Natalie Portman (500 Days of Summer) ‘She’s a girl, you’re a woman’
Being fairly young, probably one of the younger ones on this forum, I do relate to 500 days more. But it’s in a ‘been there, done that, could’ve written this relationship in an afternoon’ kinda way, as opposed to capturing my feelings and thoughts in a way that feels true, but also unimaginably perceptive.
I just watched this after seeing Beyond the Pines, listening to the podcast for BtP, and hearing nothing but praise for Blue Valentine. It’s been in my Netflix queue for some time now.
It’s so depressing. Any movie where a dog dies in the opening act is going to be depressing, but this one really has me down.
Scanning this thread, I can understand the defense of Dean. I was so shocked when Cindy got it on with her old boyfriend. But the more I think about Dean, the more I realize he’s this “seeming” nice guy, who is, really, unintentionally, kind of a prick. All you need to know about Dean is in the scene where he threatens to throw himself from the bridge if Cindy doesn’t tell him what he wants to know. How can you have an adult relationship with such a person?
He’s so wrapped up in the illusions he has of himself – never hit a woman, rail at the people who drive through your neighborhood too fast – he’ll never look too hard, or too critically at himself. It’s like a false piousness he wears like armor. It’s this very subtle emotional warfare that, if you’re on the receiving end, makes you want to cut people up. Did you hear Cindy’s friend the nurse at the hospital, “So you must be Dean?” She knows what I’m talking about. And then she shouts to Cindy, “Don’t let him brainwash you.” And Dean is all like, “brainwash?” He has no idea.
And the more I think about it, the more I realize why I don’t enjoy this movie. Why doesn’t Dean have a better sense for himself at the end of the picture? No one has an epiphany in this movie. Cindy comes closest, maybe, but I never really get the sense she understands herself any better. She is acting out – reacting to Dean’s bullshit, maybe the choices she has already made – but I get the sense that she is motivated by guilt than any real understanding of herself.
Humph.
Well, Qt3 movie mavens you’ve done it again. You got me to watch and think hard about a movie I really didn’t like, but maybe that’s a satisfying bit of movie watching fallout still. Was there a Blue Valentine podcast? Time to look in the archives.
That’s a fair point. I already outlined why I didn’t like Blue Valentine upthread, back when my memories of the film were better than they are now, but there’s a distinct lack of character growth.
For the idiots sneering at (500) Days of Summer upthread, the whole point of that movie is the main character realizing things about himself and relationships. He’s self-aware at the end in ways that Dean and Cindy never are. It’s the antithesis of Blue Valentine that way.
I thought that was the point. This is part of the depressing trilogy from that year (including Another Year & Biutiful) in which none of the flawed characters grow past their flaws, but we as viewers get to experience their broken perspectives. None of them are wholly rotten people, just as none of them are particularly good people. They’re just real.
I know people who act like them & will never grow past their flaws. Epiphanies are fantasy—or at least idealistic. They aren’t realistic.
But epiphanies are satisfying, even in small doses. I know plenty of flawed people,* but I’m not ready to buy growth and change as fantasy. Plenty of people grow and change.
I’m still glad I saw it. I think maybe I liked Place Beyond the Pines a little better, even if the ending in it felt a little less authentic than Blue Valentine. To me it felt like the Place characters each redeemed themselves a little or a lot. For all the redemption, though, Place still ends up in a similar bleak place at the end. But the kid’s racing off into the horizon made it feel a little more optimistic to me.
Was there a podcast for Blue Valentine, does anyone know? I looked back a few years on the front page, but couldn’t find one. Are all the episodes listed on the front page? It didn’t seem like 200, but I don’t know how to search. A search on the forum just showed this thread.
