The movie Aaron Taylor-Johnson said is guaranteed to “rip your fucking heart out”
If there’s one thing that pretty much guarantees a film will do well, it’s heartbreak.
Successful heartbreaking movies run the gamut from Titanic and The Notebook to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and A Marriage Story, which seemingly proves, there’s nothing people love more than watching doomed love play out on the big screen, and apparently, Aaron Taylor-Johnson is one of those people.
The actor’s career might lean more toward action hero than hopeless romantic with the likes of 28 Years Later, Nosferatu and Kraven as his most recent offerings, but that doesn’t mean the man can’t appreciate a good old tug at the heartstrings.
“[I could always watch] something about real people, like Blue Valentine,” he told Rolling Stone, “Now that’ll rip your fucking heart out”.
As heartbreaking romances go, Blue Valentine is one of the most harrowing of them all, starring Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling as a blue-collar married couple, struggling and failing to keep their marriage and lives together, simultaneously depicting their courtship and early romance to their current-day disintegration.
Its tagline might be “A Love Story”, but this film is much more akin to the likes of A Marriage Story than it is to The Notebook. It’s not so much a love story as a falling-out-of-love or soon-to-be-divorced story, and the question remains in my mind whether the two, especially Williams’ character, were ever even in love in the first place.
There was a furore over the movie at the time of its release in 2010, with the actors being nominated for Oscars and Golden Globes, but regardless of their layered performances, it’s hard to see past its cynicism in retrospect, and it also begs the question: Is this real?
Doomed relationships like this do, of course, exist in the real world, but the suggestion is that this is more real than a love story with a happy ending; well, miss me with that pessimism, please. What is it we find so much more real and gratifying about the presentation of a toxic relationship than a real one? Is it perhaps because it lets us feel justified in our own bad relationships? I digress, but there is one thing Taylor-Johnson gets right, though, it will rip your heart out and leave absolutely nothing behind. You will feel drained and miserable.
Alongside his praise of Blue Valentine is also the suggestion that ‘no one makes movies like this anymore’. “I could always watch any Al Pacino ’70s movie, Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, these beautiful, well-constructed movies. How many films are like that now?” he mused, “…something with texture and vibe and earthiness, it’s tough to find.”
I don’t know where he’s been living, and I can’t speak to the state of contemporary films entirely as opposed to the days of Sidney Lumet, but I think it’s outrageous to suggest there’s a dearth of textured, emotional and real films these days. What about Aftersun? What about Perfect Days? What about Queer? And, Sorry, Baby… and the list goes on. Those are just the first few that came to mind from the past few years. Don’t get me started on the fact that he’s clearly not looking to cinema from beyond the confines of the West, which is doing a massive disservice to cinema everywhere.
The film industry certainly has myriad problems in our current landscape, but a lack of beautiful, real and incredibly well-made movies doesn’t seem to be one of them. Time to go back to your watchlist, Mr Taylor-Johnson.
