Deep trouble

At the bottom of the Black Sea things don’t decay much. Time stands still, or, rather, time continues, people die, but things don’t corrode. Rust sleeps. It’s like a deep-water museum down there, I guess. Is this because of what they call anoxic water? I dunno. This is a film blog, not a blog on hydrology. But I’m fascinated by these places in the world, dark deep places almost no one goes to, where such phenomena occur. It’s one of the things that drew me to Black Sea, this submarine movie that, despite the presence of Jude Law, apparently slid past the gatekeepers of theatrical distribution and has since surfaced online, on DVD, Blu-ray, et cetera.

Things don’t change much at the bottom of the Black Sea and, it turns out, things don’t change much in the manly world of submarine movies either. Written by Dennis Kelly and directed by Kevin MacDonald, the prolific Scottish filmmaker who did Last King of Scotland and a really quite good historical actioner called The Eagle, Black Sea is about a laid off, pissed off Scottish submarine captain (Law) who gathers a rogue crew comprised of Britons and Russians to find a sunken WWII-era U-boat rumored to hold an offering of gold bricks Stalin was trying bribe Hitler with as a way to forestall Nazi invasion. The movie in its essence could have been made in the 1950s, and, indeed, there are times you sort of wish it was, with Don Siegel or Sam Fuller or John Huston or the young Stanley Kubrick at the helm. Those versions might have been meaner and leaner, while still keeping the film’s political undercurrents, or over-currents, as in overstated currents, perfectly readable. But I’m okay with MacDonald’s version, which is certainly more tolerable than, say, a Michael Bay version, which would of course be something else altogether. MacDonald’s a little ponderous and a little sentimental at the end with the flashbacks and a little too fond of unmotivated camera movement. And he really could have tempered Kelly’s almost comically leaden foreshadowing. But the movie sails. Or sinks. You know what I mean.

It’s no spoiler to say things aren’t going to end well. Kelly bluntly facilitates dramatic tension by having Law recruit a murderous psychopath to be the group’s ace diver. Law actually knows the guy’s a psychopath, which is what I meant by comically leaden foreshadowing. That are there are no escape suits and they can’t use the radio and all the Brits and the Russkies fucking hate each other and can’t get over Law’s insistence that everyone, him included, get an equal share of the money. Yes, Black Sea charts the failure of Marxism in a sub-culture (heh-heh) corrupted by capitalist-generated greed. And by a psychopath. Did I mention the psychopath is played by Aussie actor Ben Mendelsohn? He’s pretty enjoyable. And Law, I must admit, hold his own, surprisingly, given that he has to command the respect of a bunch of really rough fellows. Konstantin Khabenskiy is very funny as Law’s lead partner-in-crime. Sergey Veksler is the crew’s sonar guy, the “the best ears in the Russian navy.” I love the image, a sea of calm in the midst of this very macho submarine movie, of Veksler perched Buddha-like on a stool, cups on his ears, eyes closed, just listening to echoes at the bottom of the ocean. 

                

The biker, the cop, his kid and the biker's kid too

The title of Derek Cianfrance’s new film is a translation of Schenectady, a Mohawk term, and the name of the city in eastern New York state where this 140-minute tripartite crime drama unfolds. So even in his choice of title, Cianfrance is working to invoke a large historical canvas. The Place Beyond the Pines has a chronology that begins in the 1980s. Its style, atmospheres and themes draw upon certain tendencies in American movies of both the 1940s and the 1970s. Its multiple protagonists span generations, racial backgrounds, and class. Its setting feels indifferent to the 21^st century. The film is ambitious, and its ambitions, along with its largely blue-collar milieu and Cianfrance’s obvious craftsmanship are the elements I admire most. But like Cianfrance’s Blue Valentine, The Place Beyond the Pines overreaches in a way that, perhaps, betrays its author’s naïveté. Emotions burgeon and spill over, and as they spill over they feel less genuine, less invested with real experience.

In the first section, stunt biker “Handsome” Luke (Ryan Gosling, very compelling), a sort of poor man’s Evel Knievel, sloppily dressed, beach-bum-bottle-blonde, and covered in tats, turns up with a traveling carnival in Schenectady, where a year earlier he’d had a fling with Romina, a local waitress (Eva Mendes, mostly stuck playing an exhausted victim). Luke learns that that fling resulted in progeny, and his cool, cool heart begins to ache. He quits the carnival and determines to be a dad to little Jason and a partner to Romina—despite the fact that she’s got a boyfriend, who seems very nice and a good provider. Luke meets Robin, a backwoods mechanic and occasional bank-robber, played by Ben Mendelsohn, a very good actor from Australia, and one to watch out for; he was last seen looking even greasier in Killing Me Softly. Robin is the film’s most interesting character, partly because, unlike most of the other characters, his intentions aren’t overstated. (Robin nevertheless has the film’s most thudding line: “If you ride like lightning, you’re gonna crash like thunder.”) One suspects that lonesome Robin’s in love with Luke. He gives him a bed, a job, and what turns out to be a really bad idea: You need money to win that family of yours, don’t you? Let’s utilize your bike skills and rob a few banks. Complications ensue.

The second section follows Avery (Bradley Cooper), a rookie cop and son to a former state supreme court judge. Avery’s whole life changes in the time it takes to pull a trigger. It changes even more in the time it takes him to not refuse a bribe from a coven of corrupt cops helmed by Ray Liotta, our go-to guy for intimidating slime (see, once again, Killing Me Softly). Like Luke, Avery’s got a little boy, and when The Place Beyond the Pines enters its home stretch Luke and Avery’s boys will emerge to fill the narrative foreground, where they’re visited by the sins of their fathers, et cetera, et cetera. This final section loses much of the character development and attention to place that helped make the preceding 105 minutes awkward but absorbing. Forced plot mechanics take hold. The film meanders toward a resolution that feels flimsier with every climax.

Cianfrance is not lacking for audiovisual fluency. He’s good with portentous dissolves, very good at weaving evocative stray images together under the longer speeches (see the bit with Robin shooing geese for a nice example of this). But, somewhere in the grand scheming, his judgment with regards to emotional verisimilitude and narrative concision seems to falter. He may have it in him to make a truly great movie—there are stunning, even heartbreaking moments in both this and Valentine—but in order to achieve this he may have to stop trying so damned hard to make a Truly Great Movie.