Pärt and the Pines

Just the other weekend I saw The Place Beyond the Pines. It's a film about, essentially, fathers and sons, starring Ryan Gosling (Luke Blanton) and Bradley Cooper (Avery Cross) and directed by Derek Cianfrance. He previously directed Gosling in the heartbreaking portrayal of a marriage breaking up, Blue Valentine. I went into The Place Beyond the Pines with no idea about what it was about. When Cianfrance killed off his main character early on, I couldn't imagine where he could take it next. And when a second chapter on a second main character ended, and yet another chapter opened, exploring a second generation of family, my attention lagged. But there was a compelling quality that drew me back in. This film was an incredible, ambitious failure. And I loved it.

I also loved the soundtrack, which was threaded through with Arvo Pärt's Fratres, in the version for strings and percussion. This haunting music returns throughout the film, suggesting a Thomas Hardy-esque helplessness before fate and pointing up connections between characters and stories. There's a suitably timeless quality to Pärt's music, as if it has always existed and always will. It also seems to offer a bridge between humanity and nature, a shimmering portal between the physical and imaginary. A good choice for a film with a poetic, almost metaphorical title. The Place Beyond the Pines is here both an actual physical place – the woods where characters variously live, ride motorbikes and hide; confront, abduct, terrify and forgive each other – and an imaginary realm that represents unfulfilled dreams, unexpressed hopes and mental escape. The title is, roughly, the Mohawk translation of Schenectady, the city where the film is set. Of course this is far from the first time that Pärt's music has been used on film, but it works superbly here.