The Unending Trauma of ‘The Place Beyond the Pines’ (Part 2)
Warning: Though I am not usually the type to care about spoilers, ‘The Place Beyond the Pines’ is a movie that is best watched without knowing anything. I recommend that you watch the film before reading the words below.
Act 2:
We meet Avery Cross suddenly and in a moment of panic, but we can assume quite a bit about his character. Played by Bradley Cooper, Avery is a young police officer tasked with responding to the break-in Luke commits in an attempt to escape. Avery is fresh-faced and plays things by the book, reacting to the call with his training still in the forefront of his mind. Warily making his way through the home, he finds the room that Luke is holed up in, breaks down the door, and gets into a shootout that feels over before it even begins. Avery is shot in the leg, Luke is shot out the window — and Avery’s life is forever changed for it. With the protagonist of ‘Place Beyond the Pines’ lying dead on the street, the film shifts perspective.
It’s interesting how these brief moments of violence have the ability to turn our lives upside down. Just a couple of days ago I took a trip to Sacramento, and on the three-hour drive back home my wife and I came across a car accident. The car, which had been only a few hundred feet in front of me, swerved, tipped over, and rolled multiple times until it came to rest on the edge of the road, on its side and dripping fuel and oil.
We pulled over and ran to help (joining others who had already done so before us) to find three young boys, just 17 or so, in various stages of shock and pain. One was lying down, his leg broken and blood pouring out of his mouth. The others were standing, small cuts oozing blood but miraculously no worse for wear. I looked in the eyes of one of them, and saw the recognition of this traumatic event begin to dawn on him. It seemed like it would be a long time before he would get back in a car without thinking of this moment — and a long time before the effects of this single event, which took place in the blink of an eye, shifted into the background completely.
Those moments, which take only an instant, have profound ramifications, and it’s safe to say that Avery’s life would be completely different without his encounter with Luke. After the shootout, Avery is hospitalized, called a ‘hero cop’ on the news, and given new insight into the agency for which he works — for better or for worse. A high-ranking official questions him about the shooting, and Avery seems to realize that his words could very quickly be used against him. His father pushes him to use the event to his benefit, asking him to consider making a political career out of it. His wife begins to reveal her distress at his job, and her wishes for him to retire. A meeting with the police chief, which he believes will land him a promotion, instead relegates him to low-ranking job in the evidence room.
Most alarmingly, after Avery is released from the hospital some police friends come to visit him, whisking him away to do ‘off-duty police work’. To his surprise and horror, they take him to the house of Rosalina, the mother of Luke’s child, and illegally search the home in an effort to find the money stolen during Luke’s string of robberies. They force Avery to pick up Luke’s sleeping child in his crib to search it, find a hidden bag of cash, and leave, splitting their findings. Avery tells Rosalina he is “sorry for her loss,” awkwardly and emptily. Avery, who was once an idealistic purveyor of the law, begins to see the cracks in the system which he has committed his life to.
“When I was in law school, we used to always talk about justice. We’d have discussions about justice. But that’s just what they were, discussions. I joined the police force because I wanted to work alongside the brave men and women who know that some problems can’t be solved by talking.”
These were the words that Avery spoke as he gave a short speech to the public after the shootout with Luke, and we watch these words become less and less meaningful in Avery’s life. The agencies which we often believe are responsible for protecting us can end up being the ones which hurt us most. This is true not only for those who are supposed to be served, but those serving as well. Avery’s friends on the force attempt to leverage his new job, asking him to steal or modify evidence for them and citing their ‘help’ finding Luke’s money as a reason for him to do so.
A frustrated Avery tries to expose this corruption to the police chief, and his superior angrily stops him from doing so. Brokenness travels far and reaches high, and Avery’s frustration turns into total disillusionment.
His attempt to expose his friends turns against him, and Avery begins to fear for his life. He goes to his father, who’s calculated plans Avery once dismissed as unnecessary and disingenuous, and formulates a plan. He secretly records an officer friend asking Avery to modify evidence, and turns the tape in to the district attorney, the same man who initially questioned him after Luke’s shooting. Where once the DA was the player holding all the cards, Avery now finds himself in that position, strong-arming his superior into not only clearing his name but also giving him a position as an assistance district attorney.
No longer the idealistic young man he once was, Avery gets what he wanted, but at the cost of his character. If Luke’s violent streaks and wandering ways can be attributed to his lack of a father, Avery’s decision to play into the broken system he once railed against can be attributed to his need to live up to the expectations of his. Both paths provide their own form of misery, and create their own lines of trauma.
This is the basis of the film’s final act. More here.
