Failure to Communicate

I knew Blue Valentine would be hard to watch but I didn't realize why. Yes, the tang of the characters' disappointment -- in themselves, in their lives, in the world -- was sour like a mid-morning coating of early morning coffee on the tongue, and their efforts to break even each month without being broken were sobering. Yes, there were a few punches thrown and a few scenes in which a woman's body was treated with utter disregard.

But what made me turn away, what made me turn to Luke and say "Let's not watch this, I think I'm done for the night," was when the two fought not with but at one another. It takes courage to show, on screen, the way that people really talk. And the way they do not listen.

I am thinking in particular of the two climactic moments, the first in the hotel room and the second in the hospital where Cindy works, and the way that the characters apply their voices to each moment in layers, tinted foils accumulating to dim the chance they might actually hear one another. When one of them risks saying something that might possibly convey what they are feeling, the threat of the truth scares the other into disengaging completely. There are no devastating quips, no dead-eyed stares that say more than a quip ever could, no punch-lines. Just two people, increasingly isolated within their moats of sound.