Blue Valentine

Here’s a couple who have been married for six years, and it’s coming apart. We flash back to their meeting and falling in love—a bit confusingly for me, at first, until I noticed Ryan Gosling’s receding hairline—contrasting it with the mess they are in now. He has no ambition, he’s perfectly happy to have things just as they were when they met, and is incapable of understanding that people grow, because he doesn’t. He’s far from the worst husband I’ve ever seen. He doesn’t hit her, though he is given to pounding walls and extreme acting out. He genuinely loves his daughter, and can’t understand why he’s driving his wife crazy. And I can’t entirely hate a man who cries when his dog dies. But he’s still pretty awful. I’d have to kill him after a week or so. Michelle Williams got an Oscar nomination, which is quite an accomplishment, because the movie focuses more on him than on her. But she deserved it.