No Place like home

Such a rare sight is Derek Cianfrance’s familial epic The Place Beyond the Pines, it is with great ease that it buries itself inside of you, it haunts you, or as Ryan Gosling’s inked-up motorcycle maniac “Handsome Luke” would say, it “sticks around.”

Patient scope and contemplative depth of this order are typically reserved for blockbuster sci-fi or fantasy trilogies, expansive tales of magic and myth spread out across a decade for fans to live with, then leave, then pour over again with renewed interest. Taken at once, this small-budgeted but devastatingly acted drama nearly overwhelms. The footage is nervy and energetic. The score is dark and devoid of cliche.

Gosling stars as a motorcycle stunt driver, a greased up carnival attraction, silent and smoking and heralded night after night with the feverish voice howled from faceless crowds of strangers. But this odd, delicate existence is pierced when a former lover named Romina—played defensive and devoted by Eva Mendes—turns up on these neon-lit festival grounds. Surprise, he’s a father, and even bigger shock, this fact flips a switch in his soul. He wants to know his infant son. He wants to support a family—at any cost.

Soon he’s helmeted again and screaming at tellers as he robs a string of small town banks and zooms away on his bike to earn the money he and Romina will need to get out of town and start over as a family. This criminal path leads him right into the sights of Avery, Bradley Cooper’s rookie cop in a corrupt department who will do anything to get his man and advance his career. Avery has a young son too, and though he’s from a different socio-economic strata, he’s just as flawed a parent as “Handsome Luke.”

Everything about this film is gutsy. The adrenaline rush motorcycle footage—secured by shooting out of a dune buggy—the long takes and sudden time jumps are like elegant stunts in a revved-up ballet. Surprising influences and undertones—multiple Star Wars references and the way Gosling’s sleepy-eyed hangdog look recalls Sylvester Stallone in the first act of the original Rocky—bolster the epic nature of this multipart tale that follows Cianfrance’s equally-devastating but smaller-scaled relationship drama Blue Valentine. It’s like watching all three Godfather movies in a row and enjoying the end much much more. Oh, and substituting the word “cannoli” for “bike.”

As Cooper’s grown son, Emory Cohen is a little over-the-top, his too-strong street talk and New Yawk yap a tad arch for this otherwise believable film. The rest of the cast is impeccable, from Rose Byrne to Ben Mendelsohn and Ray Liotta.

It may be a bit early in the year for an Oscar contender, but so be it. Pines is bold and breathless filmmaking that rewards its viewers without talking down to them. It might even be a modern classic.