Before closing out the year in 2010 movies, I thought I would write briefly about my favorite American film of last year, Derek Cianfrance’s BLUE VALENTINE, a small independent drama about the coming together and breaking apart of a couple, played by Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling. It is not my overall #1 (which right now is Lee Chang-dong’s POETRY), which continues an interesting trend of the last couple of decades, where only two American films since 1992 have topped my year end lists (2004′s ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND and 2001′s THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS). This is in marked contrast to the 1970s and especially, going further back, to the 1950s and 1940s, where American cinema seemed to dominate. While of course this is simply my taste distinction, I don’t think I’m alone among cinephiles in this opinion. Part of this decline is in the studio system itself, but it also applies to American indie film, which seems far less stylistically adventurous than not only the global art cinema, but even popular cinemas from abroad as well (to cite our local example, Korean cinema pop auteurs like Park Chan-wook, Bong Joon-ho, and Lee Chang-dong).

In fact, if you are looking for formal experimentation in American film, you are best to examine narrative rather than style. This is certainly true of the most famous auteur to emerge in the last two decades, Quentin Tarantino, but this point holds up generally as well. J.J. Murphy, in his fine study of how the independent screenplay works, discusses the variety of approaches to storytelling in American indies, from the problematic protagonist of STRANGER THAN PARADISE to the multiple plots of TRUST to the puzzle film of MEMENTO. BLUE VALENTINE very much continues in this tradition. Stylistically, there is very little audacious about the work, but Cianfrance does employ a flashback structure to great effect. There are seven extended flashbacks in the film, and the total screen time of the present and past is roughly the same (almost 56 minutes for the present, almost 50 minutes for the past).

The back and forth, at least initially, is to present the audience with a harsh contrast between the very unhappy married couple of the present with the romantic coupling of roughly 5 years earlier. As many critics have pointed out, this turns the movie into both a great romance and a great anti-romance, all in the same story. To the credit of the film, there are no easy answers for the couple’s collapse, at least not on the surface. One has to view the two stories and try to make connections and interpretations, and for almost the entire film, Cianfrance presents each segment separately, not freely cutting from the past to present. Near the conclusion, however, he does include one example of cross-cutting past and present more freely.

The suggestion seems to be a close relationship between the circumstances of their courtship and the eventual ending of that relationship. What makes the film so emotionally powerful is how romantic the flashbacks are. We see the two characters meet and begin a courtship, one of the better “meet cute”s in cinema, including an amazing nearly three minute long take of the two performing an impromptu song and dance number on the street. It is then revealed that she is pregnant from a previous relationship. Despite this, they decide to stay together, get married, and raise the baby as their own. Despite how touching this gesture is, most marriages that last are not formed on this kind of romantic idealism, a harsh fact that makes the ending as resonant as it is.

Thus, while BLUE VALENTINE is not aiming as high as some other movies from the past year, it is nearly perfect accomplishing its own goals, and is a film that will stay with you if you connect with its emotional core. Unfortunately, it is not playing in theatres here, and it seems unlikely that it will, despite being far more acc0mplished than other Oscar contenders coming around soon, such as 127 DAYS or BLACK SWAN. In fact, the stylistic bombast of those films makes the relatively low-key BLUE VALENTINE all the more worth praising and seeking out.

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