Dinesh Kamath's column on film 'The Place Beyond the Pines' under the title 'New movie-release in Navi Mumbai' that was published in Newsband

New movie-release in Navi Mumbai

By Dinesh Kamath

The Place Beyond the Pines

The Place Beyond the Pines is a 2013 American crime drama film directed by Derek Cianfrance, written by Cianfrance, Ben Coccio and Darius Marder. It stars Ryan Gosling, Bradley Cooper, Eva Mendes, and Ray Liotta. The film reunites Cianfance and Gosling, with whom he worked on 2010's Blue Valentine. The title is the English meaning of the city of Schenectady, New York, which is derived loosely from a Mohawk word for "place beyond the pine plains."

The Place Beyond the Pines is a brooding drama of epic scope set in the New York town of Schenectady, whose name comes from a Mohawk word loosely translated as “the place beyond the pines.” So that explains the title. But there’s another meaning hinted at in the film itself, as more than one character on more than one occasion heads into the woods with the intention of going past where he’s gone before, not just geographically but morally. Schenectady is the literal “place beyond the pines,” but it’s also a symbol of the cycles and ruts we get trapped in and strive to move beyond.

The film has a sprawling scale that spans two generations of two families. The focus is on one person: Luke (Ryan Gosling), a tattooed, perpetually dirty stunt motorcyclist in a traveling carnival, one of those guys who ride in gravity-defying circles inside a spherical cage. Upon learning that a fling with a local girl, Romina (Eva Mendes), has produced a child, he resolves to stay in town and be part of his son’s life. Romina has mixed feelings about this; her boyfriend, a stable provider named Kofi (Mahershala Ali), is decidedly not pleased.

Luke’s intentions are noble, but he barely has money to support himself, let alone contribute to the baby’s upbringing. A seedy mechanic friend of his, Robin (Ben Mendelsohn), suggests a simple bank robbery – not a lavish heist, but an old-fashioned stick-up by a masked bandit, with Robin as getaway man. You don’t even need a real gun. Luke, embracing the idea, is disconcertingly cavalier about it and we come to see that his cool, meek demeanor has an unpredictable, erratic side to it.