Humanizing the Victims of Violence in Film

The task of the artist is to convey truth, in all its beauty, ugliness, and harshness, to paraphrase Nietzsche. The truth about humanity is often an ugly thing. We kill. We abandon. We destroy. Too many films glorify such things. A rare few appear to critique them, even as they glorify them, as Tarantino arguably often does. Fortunately, there are exceptions that critique while refusing to glorify violence and its consequences.

Directed by Derek Cianfrance, The Place Beyond the Pines (2012) depicts the parallel and sometimes intersecting lives of a cop and a criminal in a small town in upstate New York. With equal attention to both protagonists, one on each side of that equation, the film stands alongside Heat (1995) and The Departed (2006). Like those two films, The Place Beyond the Pines is a high caliber action-drama, tightly plotted, tautly suspenseful, and rife with moral ambiguity; but unlike those two films, The Place Beyond the Pines excels in depicting the emotional toll of violence on its victims, on its perpetrators, and on those around them.