The Place Beyond The Pines

The Place Beyond The Pines tells three separate but connected stories about fathers and sons and the legacy that one leaves for the other. 

Luke (Ryan Gosling) is a motorcycle stunt rider travelling across the U.S. with a carnival. A fling with Romina (Eva Mendes) leads to him becoming a father, something he will only find out a year later when the carnival returns to town. His fierce desire to provide and be there for his child, something he was never given by his father leads him to abandon the carnival and try to make ends meet as a mechanic. 

Avery (Bradley Cooper) is a young and driven rookie cop. Only six months into the job he takes a bullet in an incident and becomes a hero. His father (Harris Yulin) was a Supreme Court Judge and is not approving of his path but when Avery later encounters corruption in the police force he is working in he turns to his father and follows the strategy laid out to him to achieve power. 

Fifteen years after these events we meet Jason (Dane DeHaan) and AJ (Emory Cohen), the sons of Luke and Avery respectively. AJ having recently moved in with his father finds himself in the same High School as Jason and they become friends with a shared passion of getting high. 

I love The Place Beyond The Pines. I placed it as my third favourite film of 2013. It is filled with huge ambition and tries to weave three very different tales together as a cohesive whole. There are flaws in the endeavour. But there are so many things to love in these interlocking tales that show how legacy can impact on lives. 

Luke’s story is the most exciting and memorable. Gosling gives his character a rock star persona. Bleached hair. Covered in tattoos. Wearing T-Shirts inside out. Smoking continuously. He has a strong sense of duty but he is also impulsive and violent. After striking up a friendship with Robin (Ben Mendelsohn) he turns to robbing banks using his motorcycle skills to escape at high speed. Whilst he wants to provide for his child he still behaves like one. Romina is drawn to him despite her best intentions. She already has a much more steady and dependable man at home in the shape of Kofi (Mahershala Ali) but keeps finding herself drawn back to Luke. This is a burn out and not fade away story. 

Avery’s story is about the search for order in amongst the chaos. He is the opposite to Luke. Clean shaven, short haircut, uniform. His wife Jennifer (Rose Byrne) wants him to leave the dangerous life of being a policeman, but he wants to go a different path to his father. Justice needs action and not just procedure. But his hero status makes him a target for some corrupt figures in the force. Deluca (Ray Liotta) decides to bring him under his wing but Avery whilst initially unable to push back eventually folds and turns to his father for help pushing him in the direction he always wanted him to go. An elected official who shapes the law not someone on the front lines. 

As Luke and Avery’s lives were shaped by their father’s legacy the final story tells us how their lives will shape their children. Jason is shy and withdrawn, searching to understand his father. His mother is unwilling to talk to him on the subject whilst Kofi considers himself to be Jason’s father. AJ on the other hand has become bullish and rebellious. Railing against his father’s ordered and public life. 

So what is the flaw to this epic story? Simply put it will be jarring for some that the protagonist changes as each story changes. For 52 minutes it is the magnetic Luke featuring intense crime sequences. The next 39 minutes is a Serpicoesque story of police corruption featuring the driven Avery. And then the final 49 minutes follows the immature teenagers that these men have brought into the world with all their baggage. The move from Gosling to Cooper and then the relatively more unknown DeHaan and Cohen can be slightly discombobulating but it does pay off as the threads tie together. 

I am still in love with The Place Beyond The Pines. The opening segment with Gosling is exceptional. The performances from many are memorable. Gosling and Cooper are the standouts. But Mendelsohn and Liotta are also phenomenal in smaller roles searing their identities into the film. The photography is also beautiful. Director of Photography Sean Bobbitt brings wonder to the forests and countryside and a sense of mundanity to the houses and workplaces of Schenectady, New York. There are also some haunting music cues on Mike Patton’s score that seem to make everything feel like a myth being told. 

This is a grand and sweeping American epic and deserves to be celebrated and more widely known and loved. 

As an extra treat I found my original review from April 12th 2013 in my journal… I hope you can read my handwriting. And remember, “If you ride like lightning, you’re going to crash like thunder.”