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Taking a deeper look at current and past films and how they relate to the world today.

Jonathan Kim is an independent film critic who writes and produces film reviews for Uprising and other outlets. He is a former co-producer at Brave New Films.

Read his reviews online at ReThinkReviews.net. Watch his videos at www.youtube.com/user/jsjkim, and follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/ReThinkReviews. ReThink Reviews’ theme song is by Restavrant.

Blue Valentine

In Blue Valentine, we watch as a young couple played by Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams fall in love over several months in Brooklyn while simultaneously witnessing their marriage disintegrate six years later in Pennsylvania over a painful 24 hours.

But perhaps the real story of Blue Valentine is that the Motion Picture Association of America gave it an NC-17 rating, meaning that no one under 17 could see it, even if accompanied by an adult. This would doom Blue Valentine’s box office prospects since most theaters won’t show NC-17 films and most TV channels won’t advertise them. So how did Blue Valentine earn such a curse?
We’ll get to that in a minute.

Gosling plays Dean, a nice guy with a big heart and small aspirations who’s working as a mover when he meets Cindy, played by Williams, a good girl in a bad relationship who wants to be a doctor. As we watch Cindy warm to Dean’s charms, Blue Valentine intercuts scenes from their married life six years later as they raise their daughter, played by the fantastic Faith Wladyka. Dean is now painting houses and is still totally in love with Cindy. But something in Cindy, who is now a nurse, has changed, leaving her unhappy and dissatisfied.

Which was one of my biggest problems with Blue Valentine. Half of the movie is based on Cindy’s discontent with her marriage, yet it’s unclear exactly what’s causing it. While I can understand her frustration that Dean is a slacker, that’s how he was when she fell in love with him, and Dean tells her that his priority is being a good husband and father, not a career — something you’d think would sound great to someone working long hours as a nurse. He makes sincere attempts to rekindle their marriage, and is a loving and enthusiastic parent. He’s not perfect, but give the guy a break! I also wasn’t crazy about the film’s look, which is shot almost all in close ups. But Williams and Gosling have such chemistry and their performances are so strong that one tends to forgive a lot.

Supposedly, Blue Valentine got its NC-17 rating because of a scene where Dean performs oral sex on Cindy, a scene with no nudity at all. You can see plenty of graphic, grisly, depraved murders on CSI or any number of crime procedurals on primetime network TV, and much worse in R-rated action and horror films, yet the MPAA felt that this scene was so harmful that no one under 17 should be allowed to see it under any circumstances. Was it because it was a man going down on a woman, not the other way around? Or that it wasn’t a lesbian scene like the one in the R-rated Black Swan? What’s more likely to give a kid nightmares: one of the multiple disembowelings in an R-rated SAW movie, or sex?

Blue Valentine’s producers appealed the rating, and thankfully, the MPAA changed it to an R without the filmmakers having to cut any scenes. But the fact that an
NC-17 rating was even considered is disturbing enough. As a famously warmongering, military-worshipping, gun-toting country, do Americans really prefer violence to sex? Maybe it’s just America’s censors and morality police who do, causing violence to be more accessible, acceptable and popular. But Blue Valentine shows that when it comes to sex, America and its culture warriors need to grow up. After all, it’s just sex, and everyone is doing it.

Blue Valentine is rated R, yes R, and is in limited release now.