The Place Beyond the Pines

Derek Cianfrance’s 2013 film is built in three parts, each changing the man at the centre. He has named the sources: Abel Gance’s Napoleon, seen in film school across three screens at once, and Psycho’s handover from Janet Leigh to Tony Perkins. The cost is real: the film retires the actor you are most drawn to and asks you to reinvest in the next one. Refuse and the last stretch is a different picture. Across 140 minutes you sit through three separate openings. The opening is one shot leaving Luke’s trailer, crossing a working fairground and entering the globe of death. Sean Bobbitt says he read the script and saw one unbroken handheld take. He insisted on standing inside the sphere, was concussed after two hits, and the final take was got with him outside. A trained rider doubled Gosling for the globe. It was shot in Schenectady, in working banks, with tellers who had been robbed. Gosling saw the face tattoo, said it would ruin the film and asked to lose it. Cianfrance refused, saying the film was about consequences; the shame, Gosling says, became his link to the part. A good fit if you take the mid film handover as the rule, not a flaw. Not for you if you want Luke’s story to run to the end.