How "The Place Beyond the Pines" Turned Bradley Cooper Into a Serious Actor

Bradley Cooper in The Place Beyond the Pines

*NOTE: Spoilers

It's something that can be taken for granted, especially given the buzz surrounding the 2018 adaptation of A Star is Born. Bradley Cooper wasn't always a prestigious actor, producing enough quality work to earn him four Oscar-nominations over three years and a status as a charismatic lead in comedies like Silver Linings Playbook as well as heavy dramas like American Sniper. However, there was a time only five years ago when considering him an Oscar stalwart was worthy of a few laughs. At the start of 2013, his highest credits were in frat boy comedies like The Hangover and Wedding Crashers. He had little to distinguish himself as someone worth paying attention to beyond a fluke Oscar nomination. However, anyone questioning his potential only needed to wait a few months for a film that should've changed the conversation with a powerful drama about fathers and sons that also saw fellow 2018 Oscar Best Actor competitor Ryan Gosling in a duel role. The Place Beyond the Pines was ambitious and nuanced in ways that Cooper hasn't really been allowed to play before or since, and he really should've gotten more chances before A Star is Born.

In 2013, director Derek Cianfrance was coming off of his 2010 Sundance hit Blue Valentine. The film explored the crumbling of a marriage while also exploring its sweet beginnings. His bittersweet approach to drama has him primed to be one of the more exciting and experimental dramatists of modern film. In a lot of ways, his follow-up The Place Beyond the Pines was done as a challenge to go bigger and grander. It was a triptych of stories, focusing on a low-rent thief (Gosling) and the cop who chases him (Cooper) before shifting to their two children in the third act (including Dane DeHaan). While it was again a modest success, it was more of a film for the art house community than one that redefined anyone's career. Even the film's biggest draw, a supporting role by Ben Mendelsohn, was lacking any bigger Oscar buzz once the film hit home video.

And the film was created in a way meant to emphasize Cianfrance's mix of deep emotion with cinematography that played with everything from color theory to positioning to simply how cool a chase sequence could look. Nothing in the film felt more braggadocio than the opening long take where Gosling's Luke walks to a circus tent and performs a trick on a motorcycle that is dangerous. The film embraces the wild side of Luke and helps it to possess the first act as he robs banks and hides his motorcycle in Robin's (Mendelsohn) truck. Meanwhile, there's the issue of family at home, with his wife (Eva Mendes) forming a fraught relationship to her husband as he takes the Breaking Bad approach and figures that one more bout with crime will cover his family financially. He is addicted, and the film manages to convey it through the kinetic chase sequences that find Luke fighting it out with the cops before his home is one day raided and the person to blame for what follows is Avery (Cooper).

The second act is probably the moment that could have served as Cooper's calling card for most of his recent career. Had it been more of a success, it would've been able to reflect differently for an actor whose work was often bottom barrel comedies like The Comebacks and All About Steve. Here was his chance at a drama that had actual nuance from Cianfrance, a director who was willing to let him portray a police officer with enough depth to be both sympathetic and evil. In a lot of senses, Luke and Avery are both pure of heart because they believe their intentions to be true. Luke may be more of a wild card, but he wants what's best for his family. Similarly, Avery is someone who wants to do right by his family and the police force - who may or may not support his actions. Between the two, Cianfrance has created two communities that don't have much wrong necessarily, but who cause pain by following their form of justice.

It helped that during this time Gosling was in an experimental phase, following films like Blue Valentine with the even more esoteric Drive the following year. He would even become more abstract with his sole directorial effort Lost River a few years later. Still, he was producing interesting work with avant garde auteurs as he tried to find his voice. For awhile there, it did seem like he was doomed to be more art house than mainstream. However, he still would have found some respect for performances like the one in The Place Beyond the Pines, which finds his low energy nuance working to his advantage. He is able to play a cool and calm thief who never overreacts, and it makes him cooler. It makes him sympathetic that the audience doesn't know entirely what's going on in his head. He is just a very flawed man, and it becomes sad to see him gunned down.

The thing about Avery is that because the first act centers around Luke, it's easy to hate him going into the second. The film is built that way for shifting perspectives. It does help in part that Cooper plays likable hotheads, and in this case does one act that warrants his future a bit unknown. He knows the pain he's caused, and he tries his best to overcome it. However, he's still got that reputation. He is a man who has to live with that decision. Even as the film evolves to be more about his story, there's still that guilt in Cooper's performance that makes him all the more powerful. He may not have the flashy role of Gosling, but he does have a perspective on the matter that was more conventional from the outset, but is given more of an interesting juxtaposition because of the first act. Cianfrance's triptych is built around essentially a singular moment (Luke's death) and how it impacts everyone.

This is of course a story about fathers, and Cianfrance paints all sides of the matter. What happens when a father cares so much but goes about it the wrong way? What about the right way? How is it like to live without a father? All of these questions linger over the film, but come effectively into play as the third act delves into a later date when the children of Luke and Avery are older and able to form their own emotional response to the events. Even when he's not on screen, Cooper's actions of that one day create a judgment over him as a person that aren't always warranted. Where most people have moved on from this scene, it's hard for someone whose father is now gone. The fact that the children would end up together as friends, if even momentarily, is a wonderful surprise that leads to a lot of questions regarding revenge. Does one do the Shakespearean route and murder, or is there a more dignified way in forgiveness? It's hard to really say.

Hopefully in time The Place Beyond the Pines gets reassessed as one of the great modern dramas. It may be structured in too gimmicky of a way for some, but it still has a lot of heart and ambition in ways that add power to the more familiar elements. It's a film that pushes boundaries of what acting and direction can be within a story, and how important it is to have full perspective on matters. Cianfrance has only released one film since, The Light Between Oceans, which didn't have nearly as positive of a reception. With that said, he still has a promising career ahead of him between Blue Valentine and his 2013 father-son drama. One can hope that as Cooper becomes more respected for his dramatic chops, potentially winning Best Actor this year for A Star is Born, that people don't forget about the film that proved he was more than a good comedic actor. He was also capable of tender dramas with complex subtext. In a lot of ways, it starts with this film. One can hope everyone eventually realizes that.