The Place Beyond The Pines

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The Place Beyond The Pines (2013) is a beautifully complex film written and directed by Derek Cianfrance. It’s told in triptych, meaning The Place Beyond The Pines is essentially three different films. The film covers the connection between two families (both from different social classes), whose paths cross over two generations in Schenectady, a town in New York [3]. In The Place Beyond the Pines, the criminal, his deviant path and his eventual entanglement with the police, serve merely as catalysts from which the real focus of the film emerges [2]. It brings attention to the relationships between fathers and sons and explores the roles that destiny, circumstance and chance can all play in a person’s life. Cianfrance used Post Modernism, Neorealism, descriptive and prescriptive models, and Freudian theories when he wrote The Place Beyond The Pines and it shows throughout the film.
The first act of The Place Beyond The Pines revolves around the story of Luke Glanton, played by Ryan Gosling. Luke is a motorcycle stunt driver for a traveling circus, but he gives it all up when he finds out he has a son named Jason. Jason is the son of Luke and Romina (Eva Mendes). Luke wants to be a part of his son’s life, but Romina has already found a new man. Since Luke gave up his job, he has no financial stability to provide for his son so he meets a man named Robin (Ben Mendelsohn) and they start robbing banks. Luke’s robbing days don’t last long and he is soon pursued and eventually gunned down by a rookie police officer named Avery Cross (Bradley Cooper). The two cross paths for mere seconds, and their worlds meet. This is the conclusion of the first act, and leads into the second act, which is focused on Avery Cross, but it’s surprising whe...

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...Matters. N.p., 6 Aug. 2013. Web. 19 Mar. 2014.

[3] http://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/apr/14/place-beyond-the-pines-review
French, Philip. "The Place Beyond the Pines." The Observer. Guardian News and Media, 14 Apr. 2013. Web. 19 Mar. 2014.

[4] http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-place-beyond-the-pines-2013-1
Roeper, Richard. "The Place Beyond the Pines." All Content. N.p., 3 Apr. 2013. Web. 19 Mar. 2014.

[5] http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/04/18/pine-a18.html
Walsh, David. "The Place Beyond The Pines: Fathers and Sons." WSWS. ICFI, 18 Apr. 2013. Web. 19 Mar. 2014.

[6] Rosalind Coward, Sacred Cows (London 1999) p. 130

[7] Patrick Casement, Further Learning from the Patient (London 1997) p. 68 and p. 116

[8] Salman Akhtar, Comprehensive Dictionary of Psychoanalysis (2009) p. 106

[9] Erich Neumann, The Origins and History of Consciousness (1995) p. 190

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