Scenes from a bad marriage: Blue Valentine

It's not a very likable movie, but "Blue Valentine" is a truly impressive account of a marriage gone to hell - echoes of many recent Indie films, though its characters (played really well by Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams) and its narrative are more complete - film goes to great lengths to build in the back story so we see not only the marriage falling apart, with a unity of time (the "present" action takes place over a two-day span) but also of the back story - we see not only that these people are together but how they got together: very effective how we see them in some scenes as young and attractive and terribly needy, each in his/her way, and in others somewhat (about 5 years, but looks like more, especially Gosling) older, and having moved on in different directions, Williams thinking at least a little about her career (nursing) whereas Gosling has lost all the boyish charm that won Williams over and now sunk into laziness and alcoholism and self-indulgence, though he's not a complete loser, he's a devoted dad for example. The true roots of Blue Valentine are probably the films of Cassavetes - it seems to be a movie that allowed the leads (and there are no other significant characters) to improvise scenes, to build their own dialogue based on the established situation, in other words, a film that draws heavily on the theatrical tradition, a bit of a throwback in that way. Film is totally credible and grows on you as it moves along and we get deeper and more complex info about the two lead characters. One of those films I admired more than loved, in part because it's very dark and in part because in capturing the inanity of Gosling's life and the failure of the marriage the film at times seems to be running on empty.