The Place Beyond the Pines (2012), Derek Cianfrance
- IMDB.COM: Rating: 7.6 (34,000+ votes); Metascore: 68 (40+ critics)
- ROTTEN TOMATOES: Tomatometer: 82% (143-175)
- TOP7 NEWSPAPERS: 71 AVG, no 4-star reviews
If you hadn’t noticed by now, there’s no black-and-white truth with Derek Cianfrance, the director of Blue Valentine, a highly emotional drama about a schism of a contemporary married couple and one of the best films of 2010. In The Place Beyond the Pines, his latest collaboration with Ryan Gosling, the star of his previous highly-acclaimed film, anything can be justified, but not everything is justifiable. There is no traditional bisection into good and evil, just persons of different backgrounds who are for most of the time the victims of the situation they found themselves in. The situation is imposed on them and they’re acting on their instinct rather than on their reason. That instinct is primordial and their reactions are of animals who want to protect themselves and take care of their loved ones. Although young, Cianfrance is wise enough not to take sides and turn his film into a morality tale. Instead, as he did with Blue Valentine, he backs off and lets us as his audience to draw a conclusion about the interwoven lives of the characters he created. His story has circular shape and linear trajectory, but gives a pervading impression of a broken triptych that goes through an agony just in order to remain as a whole. That’s not the flaw, that’s the taste of life. And The Place Beyond the Pines bleeds life.
EUPHORICFX GRADE:
....I love time spanning movies and having read all the reviews, this film is not going to let me down. I have a feeling it will be packed with character individuality, tension and drama....what more can one ask? 
