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The 2012 film The Place Beyond the Pines was a key opportunity for several major actors to prove their leading man bona fides. The multi-generational crime drama is contemplative, grounded, yet at times melodramatic — perfect for Bradley Cooper to stretch his wings.
Cooper put in a great performance. It took some doing for the Hangover actor to pull it off, though. To truly make his performance convincing, he had to head to a real-life police academy.
‘The Place Beyond the Pines’ fixates on realism over typical Hollywood violence
The Place Beyond the Pines is a crime drama that hinges on violence, created by a man who finds violence repellent. Director/screenwriter Derek Cianfrance, inspired by Napoleon (1927) and Rebel Without a Cause (1955), set out to explore fatherhood within a crime drama framework.
While more action-packed than Cianfrance’s previous work, like Blue Valentine, Pines comes back to one act of violence that haunts two generations of characters. According to Slant Magazine, the killing that takes place in the film sets up the more measured, quiet third act of the film.
The emotional inter-generational story is the core of the film. But to make it believable, Cianfrance allowed his actors room to bring something of themselves to the characters. That included improvisation on set or even adding lines to the script. Cooper took it a bit further than that.
Why did Bradley Cooper take the police academy test for ‘The Place Beyond the Pines’?
Earlier this year, Cooper sat down for an actor-on-actor interview with Academy Award winner Mahershala Ali on the Variety YouTube channel. In reflecting on some of his greatest challenges in developing as an actor, the Silver Linings Playbook actor reflected on preparing for Pines.
“[Cianfrance] encouraged me to take the police academy test. Which I dug, I loved doing,” Cooper said. “It was invaluable.” The two actors note that they need to be convincing as characters in Cianfrance’s work because of how he puts together his final films.
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The scripts tend to be overwritten on purpose, and actors are given room to improvise. The films don’t truly come together until these takes are stitched together into a more coherent whole.
For that to work for Cooper’s police officer-turned-Attorney General-candidate character in Pines, the actor had to live the character on set somewhat. It wasn’t full-on method acting, but when the cameras were rolling, he needed to look, act, and feel like a real cop.
Cooper’s character in ‘The Place Beyond the Pines’ is an old Hollywood throwback
Cooper seems to enjoy getting involved with throwback films, like American Hustle or Nightmare Alley. Pines does start as a period piece, but it’s a different sort of throwback to those films. Its 1990s through 2010s setting does not reflect the films of those time periods. Instead, its tone and performances owe more to 1950s American dramas.
As Avery Cross, Cooper plays two very different sides of the same complex man. In the first two acts, he is a young cop thrust into a situation that has him hailed publicly as a hero. The plot takes him into a much more murky position in private, however. And it’s that complexity that has been roiling inside Avery for years once the third act begins.
It’s that section of Pines that seems to make or break the film, depending on which critic one pays the most attention to, according to Rotten Tomatoes. Regardless of what one thinks about the major tonal shift, Cooper maximizes the opportunity.
His two takes on Avery are the heart of the film. The earlier events find much of their meaning in Cooper’s performance during the climax of the movie. That’s where the story Pines was telling all along finally emerges.
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