What I Watched -- Blue Valentine

Blue Valentine is another one of the many movies that got Oscar buzz  last year which I never got around to seeing.  It stars Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling as Cindy and Dean, a working-class couple stuck in their crumbling relationship.  There's an odd disconnect between them; it's as though Dean sees the marriage changing but doesn't want it to, and Cindy thinks it's not changing but needs it to.  You see all that too, as well as flashbacks to the beginning of their clumsy but loving relationship

A first for me here, I'm going to quote another review (from the San Francisco Chronicle), because I think it sums up my feelings so well after having finished the film, which is both crystal clear and totally confusing: "[It] shows a woman who has fallen out of love with her husband, even though he is a loving man, and even though he is worthy of love. At the same time, we see why she would fall out of love with him - and why, if we were her, we wouldn't want to be married to him, either."  You sort of hate her for how she is, but you completely understand it as well.

The movie was originally rated NC-17 by the MPAA, but they changed the rating to R when the filmmakers appealed.  You can read the discussion about the ratings yourself; there are a number of sex scenes and of course some nudity to go along with them, but I'd imagine most of the controversy was about a scene which raises the issue of the complicated emotions men and women - even married ones - have about sex, and how those play out.

Mostly, this movie is just sad.  It's sad to look back on their relationship and see Cindy and Dean as the completely different people they were when they met.  They still have flashes of their old selves, but life, jobs, and a daughter have gotten in the way.  And it's sad now, to see the decay that remains.

Bottom line: this movie is seriously depressing, and especially depressing in its normalcy.  There is nothing spectacular about either of these characters; you can imagine this happening every day, in every small town in the country.  It's a real downer.  Fabulous acting, though.