The Place Beyond the Pines (2013)
Directed by Derek Cianfrance
A motorcycle stunt rider considers committing a crime in order to provide for his wife and child, an act that puts him on a collision course with a cop-turned-politician.
33 connections found
View:
33 films that influenced The Place Beyond the Pines
What critics say influenced The Place Beyond the Pines
It’s reminiscent of a lot of earlier films, including “Home from the Hill,” Vincente Minnelli’s 1960 adaptation of William Humphrey’s novel, which treats some similar themes.
"The Place Beyond the Pines" is a gripping, intimate family parable whose "sins of the father" theme is vaguely reminiscent "The Godfather."
Most will be surprised and easily impressed with the film’s scope and Cianfrance’s patience as a storyteller, because most would have lost control over such an expansive tale, especially given the film’s running time and endless amount of on-screen talent, but Cianfrance somehow manages to balance it all out for a majority of the film’s time and because of that I consider The Place Beyond the Pines the year’s current best film so far and one of the single most important family dramas since The Godfather.
Pines sees Cianfrance channeling The Godfather Part 2; but instead of fathers at the head of criminal dynasties separated by and echoing through the chasm of time, it’s the collision of two men and how the subsequent fallout manifests itself in their family and heirs.
But Cianfrance gives interviews in which he says he’s wanted to make a “triptych” ever since he saw Abel Gance’s silent epic Napoléon.
I'm misquoting They Live By Night, the much-imitated Nicholas Ray film about the lower-depths life.
He resembles the ill-fated heroes in Nicholas Ray pictures such as They Live by Night , On Dangerous Ground , and In a Lonely Place .
Advertisement
Cinematographer Sean Bobbit (Steve McQueen’s Shame and Hunger) pulls right up alongside the cage bars and peers in, rendering the bikes abstract as they buzz by.
The Place Beyond the Pines is a much bigger canvas, and scene by scene it can be riveting, in part because of the meticulous widescreen camerawork (the d.p. this time is Sean Bobbitt, who shot Hunger and Shame for Steve McQueen) and also because of Cianfrance's sure touch with actors, who manage to rise above the ultimately thin and repetitive material.
Cinematographer Sean Bobbit (Steve McQueen’s Shame and Hunger) pulls right up alongside the cage bars and peers in, rendering the bikes abstract as they buzz by.
The Place Beyond the Pines is a much bigger canvas, and scene by scene it can be riveting, in part because of the meticulous widescreen camerawork (the d.p. this time is Sean Bobbitt, who shot Hunger and Shame for Steve McQueen) and also because of Cianfrance's sure touch with actors, who manage to rise above the ultimately thin and repetitive material.
Sean Bobbitt, who collaborated with director Steve McQueen on another dark story, 2011's "Shame" and the coming "Twelve Years a Slave," served as director of photography.
Reminiscent of the hyper-cool, calm, tension-filled car scenes in 2011's " Drive ," the robbery getaway set-pieces are astoundingly shot in long, lucid takes by cinematographer Sean Bobbitt (2011's " Shame "), his lensing and the vividly meticulous sound effects placing the viewer squarely in Luke's motorcycle seat.
Derek Cianfrance attempts a macro-micro social approach that worked well for projects such as John Sayles’s “City of Hope.”
This is, however, the kind of narrative ambition that also eluded Sean Penn (in the similar-feeling “The Indian Runner”) as well as Cianfrance’s own cinematic father figure, John Cassavetes, in his later films.
Like the nightclub singer who is blinded by the shootout in John Woo’s The Killer (1989), Romina suffers as a result of the men around her and this suffering includes being kept figuratively in the dark.
Advertisement
While the opening tracking shot evokes the isolation and despair of Darren Aronofsky’s brilliant “The Wrestler,” Luke’s life is soon punctuated by lightning strikes of crime, followed by the gentle roll of downtime with his family.
For a minute there, it looks like “The Place Beyond the Pines” will be a deeply psychological character study in the tradition of “ The Wrestler ” or “ The Fighter .”
So many supporting characters fill the story — a corrupt cop (Ray Liotta), a woman who is fearful that she has married an entire police department (Rose Byrne), a slightly slimy district attorney (Bruce Greenwood), Avery’s father, a weary former state supreme court justice (Harris Yulin) — that at times it seems like a seedy, small-town Goodfellas.
Stylish and assured, it hooks us from the start, beginning with a dazzling travelling shot (like many directors, Cianfrance probably thinks he's imitating Scorsese and "Goodfellas"; what he's really imitating is Scorsese imitating not just "Touch of Evil," but "I Am Cuba").