"Love is not a victory march it's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah." The aching intonation with which Jeff Buckley sings that line in his cover of "Hallelujah" was the first thing that reverberated through my head after watching the movie Blue Valentine. The eerie stillness. The bittersweet. Love. It's a testament to the fact that love of the deepest nature can be as painful as it is pleasure. Rarely is the totality of this aspect of our most powerful relationships accurately captured and so completely conveyed in art…in a way that makes your bones creek. It's also true that the stories we all know about love gone awry are replete with the familiar themes of the scorned woman and/or the wayward man. The woman who's man no longer loves her or maybe never did. We hardly ever discuss the opposite. Rarely has there been a movie that is able to arrest so well both the scene and the sentiment of a man sunken to his knees, grabbing at sand as the tide comes in. But the truth is while that's a refreshing plot point in Blue Valentine, that's not what makes it a good movie. In fact Blue Valentine isn't a good movie..it's haunting. It captures the deterioration of a relationship so well, the sorrow in each syllable of the word "goodbye", it's scary and it hurts. In a good way of course.
