A well-made, beautifully acted film is what Blue Valentine is, but a powerful movie about divorce it is not. Blue Valentine stars Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams. It’s a movie about divorce (or maybe not, the ending is vague). However, that’s what it was sold as in 2010. It’s clear that the filmmaker, Derek Cianfrance is pulling from a personal experience and that was confirmed in an interview where he states his parents got divorced at 20, but the thing about the movie is that it skips over the most important part and makes a less convincing portrayal of a marriage falling apart than it thinks it makes.

And as an engaged reader, you’re probably thinking “what is the most important part of the movie that’s skipped over.” Well, it’s the fact –in whispers- that’s the child’s not his (Ryan Gosling’s character). I’m not that hesitant in revealing what would be a major part of most other movies, because like I previously stated the movie shies away from seriously discussing the fact (once again I repeat) the kids, not his!

The marriage started off with a weak base and now the movie is going to try and persuade the audience that at one point they were in the happily-ever-mindset, but now it’s fallen apart and now the movie skews most of the blame onto Ryan Goslings’ character. I get he’s an unambitious, hard-drinking, guy with a tortured childhood. Once again I repeat the child’s not his, yet the director still depicts him as a great dad. I get that marriage (or love) shouldn’t be thought of as an equation or algorithm, but this guy takes up all her baggage and he’s a good father. However, the movie places a lot of this marriage’s failure on him.

The anticipated response is that the child is a minor detail and that the real issue has to do with a divorce. This defense of the movie is based on the sentiment that the child is just one of the many issues surrounding this marriage. In a divorce, the children should be the main concern. The movie should reflect this reality or else it can’t claim to tell us, the audience anything about real life.