Have you ever felt love go away?
Was it instant much like how it appeared?
Or did it linger and hesitate as it fled?
A shared emotion that felt so certain, so palpable and boundless...but like all things
had an end.
Those benign feelings that saturated your being spoil and turn into something unrecognizable.
An ambulant husk of what once was, dried out by resentment and hurt.
A Doomed Romance.
In today's video we continue the procession of failed relationships with the endearing
and raw addition of Blue Valentine.
The story of Dean and Cindy who seemed to have found their happily ever after,
but got stuck in a mundane self-inflicted nightmare.
The past and the present of their relationship is put in full display juxtaposed so we can
see where in between...their love dissolved.
Spoilers will follow.
"I'm asking you please... let's get out of here... we got to get out of here... we have
to get out of this house..."
Blue Valentine starts in the present.
Cindy and Dean are a married couple with a young six-year-old child and it's evident
from their interactions that they are a few misplaced words away from a complete blowout.
As the movie progresses, the story is intercut with vignettes from the past that inform us
on how they met and fell in love.
"You can tap dance?"
"Can you?"
"No...here, I'll play a song and you dance" What these two timelines create is a contrast
that is revealed thematically and visually.
The past is filmed on actual celluloid, using handheld and dynamic camera movements with
a warmer more inviting color grade, while the present is digitally recorded with colder
blue hues in the shadows and restrained by a static camera that parallels the couple's
increasingly sedentary (unspontaneous) life.
Another contrast can be found with the characters themselves.
When we meet Dean, he is a high school drop out looking for a job as a mover.
He's a caring warm aimless soul with lust for life and seems unbothered by just going
with the flow of things.
Unlike Cindy, who is grounded, quiet, colder and determined to finish University and become
a doctor.
Nevertheless, their paths intersect and with the passage of time, the characters turn into
a contrast of their former selves.
Not just due to how their life turned out; Dean having to settle down and Cindy cutting
her education short and becoming a nurse, but because their past and present interactions
with each other are night and day.
"Where do you wan to go?"
"I want to go away to school."
"What are you going to study?"
"Medicine."
When they used to ask questions, it was to open a dialogue, to try and get to know the
other person.
Every bit of information being new and cherished leading to more insight.
But in the present, their questions are not for insight but of judgement.
A way to deepen miscommunications.
Asking for explanations to an action they didn't like.
"How come your just telling me now?"
"I'm-because-I'm telling you now."
"How come you didn't tell me when we where-when we where there?"
"I don't know because I was flustered and I'm telling you now."
Conversations no longer hold expressions of love but are minefields where you have to
carefully manoeuvre around a problematic situation.
Dean's spontaneity is no longer an attractive quality but a sign of immaturity and Cindy's
groundedness is now interpreted as indifference.
"Can we really sit-down and have an adult conversation because every time we do... you
take what say and turn into something I didn't mean."
Their love is now eclipsed by their mutual resentment.
This contrast is meant to mirror the contradictions we can find in a relationship.
As the director put it: "I've always seen Blue Valentine as a duet
between a man and a woman, their past and their present, their youth and their young
adulthood, love and hate, joy and despair" In a relationship, there are certain situations
where you will feel like you are experiencing a physical and emotional contradiction.
You might go to sleep with someone you disagree with or start a fight with someone your doing
groceries with.
There will be disappointment next to admiration or anger along-side love.
"Nobody else talks in my family, when they talk, they just yell."
"I'm never getting married."
Cindy and Dean's relationship shows us, that with time, love can change.
Dean starts at a place of not wanting to be tied down.
He is passionate and experiences emotions to the fullest, once he meets Cindy, he profoundly
falls in love with her.
"What's your name?"
"Go away."
"Go away?
That's a weird name."
So much so that he decides to become the father of her child.
That's where his love takes him; to have a wife, a child, a home... the things he never
wanted but then realizes makes him content, because it's what he never had growing up...ever
since his mother left him.
On the other side, Cindy comes from a dysfunctional home, where her parents didn't divorce but
made her upbringing vey difficult, so she is naturally wary of relationships.
She has a fear of picking to wrong person.
She is worried about the impermanence of love and why it goes away.
"I never want to be like my parents" "I know they must have loved each other at
one time. Right?
"Did they just get it all out of the way before they had me?"
Dean's passion is a welcomed change because it's a love she feels her parents didn't have
and will surely help her avoid the future she fears.
But as time passes on, it's those same strong emotions that become an issue.
She realizes she wants more out of life and needs Dean to want more.
"Isn't their something else you want to do?"
"Than what?
To be your husband?
To be Frankie's dad?"
"What do you want me to do?"
But Dean is cozy with being complacent and rejects her need for change, which reinforces
her fear.
It's what happens in many relationships, somewhere along the way when they weren't paying attention
these, two individuals started to grow apart...and when you grow apart those needs you used to
be able to fulfill go unattended.
Two people that used to be in sync are now detached.
This is perfectly illustrated with the use of lenses.
The past being shot by a wide angle giving the characters ample space to move around.
As they get to know each other they start filling each others frame.
While in the present it's filmed with telephoto lenses, separating the characters in their
own tight frames, no longer sharing the same space as before.
Together physically, but emotionally and mentally divided.
"[...] I think when you start having experiences in life, you make choices every choice has
a consequence and I feel like when people get older [their] path narrows the road narrows
for them and there's less opportunity and so I want to visually represent that with
Blue Valentine with the past being a place of opportunity visual opportunity for the
actors that could go anywhere and the present to be a place [with] less opportunity, less
space, less room to move, less room to breathe [...]"
It's ironic that that the place Dean and Cindy chose to reinvigorate their relationship is
called the future room.
A windowless claustrophobic dimly lit uninviting place representative of what Cindy fears their
relationship is becoming.
Where Dean's proposition to have a baby is too much for Cindy to bare.
In the past, the prospect of a child is what initiated their union, but in the present,
it's what makes Cindy realize it's over.
"I'm done with this.
I'm done being angry like this.
I'm done having you drunk like this.
I'm done."
"Don't close the door."
"I'm closing the door."
Blue Valentine was brewing inside director Derek Cianfrance for a good twelve years as
he wrote over 60 scripts before getting to a final draft but even then, he only used
the script as steppingstone and encouraged the actors to set aside what was written and
improvise their scenes.
Cindy and Dean's first date are the real reactions of the actors discovering each others' talents,
Dean going over the edge of the bridge to make Cindy tell him she's pregnant was an
unplanned escalation.
The actors actually lived together in the house for a month limited to a painter's and
nurse's budget.
All these efforts where taken to try and create real moments, like a documentary of two people
falling in and out of love.
This need grew from the director's rejection of unrealistic portrayal of romance on the
screen and strived to show characters: "[...] who aren't perfect, who don't speak
in perfect sentences and who don't have perfect story arcs.
Their lives don't wrap up so easily.
I think the audience yearns for that kind of honesty because the fantasy that Hollywood
is enamored with actually betrays people in the long run."
We see authenticity be respected with the use of camera angles.
They are behind a window, or placed further back in a scene, catching up to the characters,
or even at their backs while they are fighting in the car.
This shares the perspective the director experienced while witnessing his parent's arguing.
"[...] the film Blue Valentine always to me has that child's perspective to it, always
watching our parents not from a perfect angle but from over their shoulder, from behind
them we're seeing [and] observing this thing happen between two people."
The director wanted to show the complexity of a relationship that he experienced during
his parent's divorce and present in his own relationships.
A story of relatable unpolished people with no villains just characters that are perhaps
emotionally unequipped to find solutions to their mounting problems.
"I can't stop.
You can't stop, I can't stop.
I don't know what else to do!"
A harsh but important reminder that love is an ideal we strive to express and experience
without flaws, but our expressions of love can only be as well put together as we are.
That's why Cindy and Dean's love is of contradictions, change and imperfections.
Because as humans, we are flawed so a romance can be as doomed as what we bring to it good
and bad.
So, what's the point of this Doomed Romance?
To not expect relationships to be perfect when our expression of love realistically
isn't either and that it's okay to allow yourself the expectation that relationships can end.
"We all are programmed by these fantasy movies of this never and forever.
If Dean and Cindy don't make it, and if they never get back together, then they had it.
It's okay.
To have it for a day is better than never finding it at all."
It's like the fireworks at the end of the movie, some don't take much time to dissolve
but they still burned bright and lit up the sky.
A love story is still a love story... even when two people don't end up together.
Thank you for watching our video.
That was the fifth installment of our Doomed Romance series.
Let us know what other doomed couple you would like us to discuss in the next one!
My personal choice would be Marriage Story, but you can still change our minds down in
the comments.
Also don't forget to like share and subscribe and hit the notification bell.
That would really help our channel to keep growing.
The musical composition was made by Eduardo Gonzalez.
If you like his work then please check out his information down in the description.
Until next time.