15 May 2011
Lloyd Dobler Redux
)Published on May 15th, 2011 @ 02:30:36 pm, using 3241 words, 516 views
At one point towards the end of Blue Valentine, during a meet-the-family dinner scene appropriately enough, amidst so much inadvertent pointing out of potentially irreconcilable differences, it suddenly hit me like a ton of bricks:
DEAN IS LLOYD DOBLER!
[Click on the thumbnail for a larger view]
He’s that very same guy… so lovestruck he can only answer a concerned father’s probing questions pertaining to his future plans with an earnest “Spend as much time as possible with Diane before she leaves.”
He’s that same naturally likable underachiever transplanted into a parallel universe, with ever so slight adjustments to circumstance and character - added touches here and there, trifling every day choices that eventually amount to more than you thought they might and lead to entirely different outcomes.
Dean and Lloyd share the same remarkable capacity for consistent passion that is all-embracing but for the future. To Lloyd, the future is an enigma he’s better off coming upon in due time. To Dean it might as well just be a motel room.
The long term future is near inexistent. They’re stuck in a mindset/timeline where the present is the thing. An extended, eternal moment that merits their undivided attention, keeps their lives tangible. The present is their gravity, if you will.
Lloyd Dobler is romantic in a way guys usually aren’t. He is romantic and impractical in a movie tailor-made to accomodate his virtues and keep his flaws to a minimum. A film ready to neutralize anything that might derail its storyline, besmirch the beauty of the central character or the love we’re led to feel for him quite unconditionally, which is to say life as we know it (petty details, twists and turns included) is suspended for the duration of the story.
A mainstream movie has to do that. It simply has to accomodate virtues and flaws in such a way that its pre-established checklist of requirements is fulfilled. It balances the goody-two-shoe-ness of too many virtues with just enough flaws. And then it sets them on opposite corners of a boxing ring. Because if pit against one another they’ll eventually converge, embrace and meld into one. Virtues leading the way to flaws and flaws to virtues.
Lloyd Dobler is nearly all virtue in the light cast upon him. There is, of course, his undeniable aimlessness but it’s made to seem bold, fearless and original. Who’s to say he wouldn’t eventually make it as a kickboxer? Who’s to say the universe wouldn’t conspire to give him everything he deserves?
Maybe. But then again not so fast. And not so easily. And not so certainly. Transplant the heart of a character like Lloyd into another movie and a set of less favorable circumstances and I’m convinced you’ve got Dean. Dean is Lloyd years later when routine and reality have sunk in and sanded off the varnish of a budding relationship hastily put together (that is, put together without much regard for affinity.) In the real world any such Dobler excesses, any such aimlessness, any such deprioritizing of personal ambition could only pave the way for one’s image to wear thin in the eye of any beholder. (Come to think of it, Dean is Judith Nelson, too.)
Lloyd is allowed to dive head first into his romantic notions, no questions asked, no objections raised…
I figured out what I really wanna do with my life, what I want to do for a living is I wanna be with your daughter. I’m good at it.
It all comes across as taintlessly sweet and romantic. Lloyd is Prince Charming. He fits my favorite profile of the Perfect Guy, narrowed down to three essential features by Elizabeth Wurtzel in Prozac Nation ("naughty desire, respect and abandon.") He’s Prince Charming in a modern fairy tale. A theory confirmed by the litmus test of how much we like him. If he were real there’d be so much more to hate or at least so much more objectivity with which to look at him…
And that’s exactly what happens to Dean. As witnesses to his relationship, we’re allowed to exercise that kind of objectivity. He changes in our eyes, just as he does in his wife’s. Years into the marriage, he emerges, as though from the depths of time, from a different decade, from a different movie, from a different self… to be confronted:
Cindy: Isn’t there something you wanna do?
Dean: Like what?
Cindy: I don’t know. You’re so good at so many things. You could do anything you wanted to do. You’re good at everything that you do. Isn’t there something else you wanna do?
Dean: Than what? Than be a husband? To being Frankie’s dad? What do you want me to do? In your like dream scenario of me like doing what I’m good at, what would that be?
Cindy: I don’t know. You’re just so good at so many things, you can do some many things, you have such capacity…
Dean: For what?
Cindy: You can sing, you can draw, you can dance…
Dean: Listen… I didn’t wanna be somebody’s husband, ok and I didn’t wanna be somebody’s dad, that wasn’t my goal in life, for some guys it is, it wasn’t my but somehow I’ve… it was what I wanted. I didn’t know that and it’s all I wanna do, I don’t wanna do anything else, that’s what I want to do, I work so I can do that.
Confronted on the very attribute that is most attractive in theory. His constancy. For Dean is constant. A heart-on-his-sleeve-wearing member of the endangered “He’ll always be there” species. And yet, for some reason, not quite able to carry it as well as Lloyd. His self-defense arguments, though fundamentally romantic, come across as irksome… make you queasy at best.
And here, virtue and flaw come to embrace and merge, like two boxers in a ring. Just as he’s constant enough to always be there, he’s also constant enough to never reach for anything other than the modest lot he’s managed to attain.
His romantic theories are very much his own and point out truths that aren’t so easily arrived at, and might require pointing out:
I feel like men are more romantic than women. When we get married we marry, like, one girl, ‘cause we’re resistant the whole way until we meet one girl and we think I’d be an idiot if I didn’t marry this girl she’s so great. But it seems like girls get to a place where they just kinda pick the best option… ‘Oh he’s got a good job.’ I mean they spend their whole life looking for Prince Charming and then they marry the guy who’s got a good job and is gonna stick around.
A high school dropout, he spouts them in utter simplicity offsetting their shrewdness and insight. He has amazing potential but he’s stuck somewhere beneath a low glass ceiling.
Dean is a good person with a good heart who sincerely believes that to be enough in order for happiness to ensue. Having found work with a moving company his first job is to move an elderly man’s entire life’s worth of belongings into a nursing home. He receives practical instructions on how to get the job done and move on. But keep in mind… Dean is constant, which means he’s endowed with the kind of mechanism that makes him susceptible to easy attachment. That kind of mechanism doesn’t allow for turning your back or moving on just like that. A few hours dedicated to packing up a man’s entire existence and hauling it to what will probably be his last home, is enough to warrant involvement even if short-lived. Nothing maudlin about it. Just a very real, believable, admirable character detail. The job done, he lingers in the yet unoccupied room. Something keeps him there, his humanity perhaps, or the feeling that the job may not be quite finished according to his own standards. He takes the time to look and see. He opens a box, finds a wedding picture, places it awkwardly on a shelf, goes through the boxes one by one finding more pictures, hammers a nail into a wall, gets rid of the dust accumulated on a blanket, places jars of little collectibles on the heater, tapes matchbooks on a wall, picking up speed as he goes as though finding his purpose. Dean goes as far as to adorn the window with Christmas lights and to place a ‘Welcome Home Walter!!’ sign on the door. It’s such a lovely, selfless gesture I could’ve fallen for him right then and there.
Falling in love is easy enough…
Walter doesn’t seem to get it at first. Either slow to understand due to advanced age, or disapproving of the liberty taken. Dean saturates their seconds together with information, fast-talking not unlike Lloyd, but pressed for time as opposed to nervous. I held my breath for that tour of the room. I ached on Dean’s behalf for some recognition. I’m positive he wouldn’t have minded had it not come, had his efforts gone ignored, had he been reprimanded, even. He hadn’t done it for a tip. He hadn’t done it for a thank you. It was simply his way of completing the job, not according to his boss’ demands but to his personal standards.
Walter does eventually let on that he recognizes and appreciates the gesture by way of a double-handed handshake and an almost whispered but carefully mouthed ‘thank you’ at which I sighed in relief. Dean had been seen and that meant nothing short of justice to me. For a moment not just a mover but a moving man. A man capable of moving in more ways than one.
Dean steps out of the room, turns to the camera and something else captures and holds his attention. Someone else that invites the promise of attachment, more permanent this time. Lovable, promising, genuine Dean with plenty of time ahead to reach and become, becomes entranced by his future wife only to be, from an editing standpoint, segued to a harsh verdict, the very face of disappointment. The cut is brilliant. Linking past to present. Constancy to change. A to Z.
[Click on the thumbnail for a larger view]
Cindy’s is the face at the other end of his gaze. Both in the chronology of the story and of the movie. She’s there as a circumspect young woman suddenly the object of romantic interest and six years later as an unhappy mother and wife, immersed in the kind of deep thought that paints vividly across a face whatever is truest and innermost. Cindy isn’t flattered by the initial attention but is eventually won over by his originality and promise. This is no regular movie love story in that the characters are inevitably sidetracked in spite of their best intentions, and feelings not only run the gamut but morph their way from A to Z. The latter shot of Cindy reveals her shedding every minute that goes by another ounce of ability to hide her growing loathing for Dean.
And that too, is understandable. Blue Valentine allows room for the traits we’re drawn to as well as those we’re repelled by. And it shelters it all under its awning of understanding.
There’s a lot that’s wrong with Dean. He is a bully, he twists Cindy’s words, he’s insecure (understandably so since she is the changing one for better and worse), he’s conversationally unilateral, a trap-setter, dreadful and exhausting. He is a child. A deglorified version of Peter Pan.
Lloyd is never made to step into those murky waters. He has no competitors for the love of Diane Court. He has an opponent in her father but no seed of insecurity. The same goodness is there. His, directed at his very opponent which makes him superior in a way. Nobler than Dean and his random goodness.
Lloyd’s treatment of Jim Court has always seemed Jesus-like to me. The respect carved in stone for a lover’s parent (in spite of every unworthiness) has always been a deal-clincher for me in allowing myself to be irrevocably won over by a character (Rupert Friend’s Prince Albert in Young Victoria, another example of that feat.)
Lloyd: She wouldn’t get out of the car. I brought her all the way here, she said she was going to come here, and she wouldn’t get out of the car. But I thought that it was important, that she come to see you, because I know that if you go somewhere and you don’t deal with your family stuff, then you’re just gonna, she’s gonna, um…
Jim: Are you going to England with her Lloyd?
Lloyd: That’s one of the things I wanted to talk to you about sir.
Jim: Are you?
Lloyd: Am I going? Am I going to England? I’ve thought about it quite a bit, and I’ve realized what I probably should do is just carve out a goal for my future and find out what I wanna do with my life, do all the stuff that I’ve been avoiding in a big way. I mean, Diane and I can wait for each other, right? What’s she gonna… she’s gonna run off with some English guy? There’s no way.
Jim: Well Lloyd, I admire you for not hitching a ride. You know, my daughter’s a lot different from you.
Lloyd: I know.
Jim: She’s very successful.
Lloyd: I know.
Jim: Very talented.
Lloyd: I know. But then I reconsidered. ‘Cause I figured out what I really wanna do with my life, what I want to do for a living is I wanna be with your daughter. I’m good at it.
Jim: You’re not a permanent part of her life. You’re a distraction.
Lloyd: I’m the distraction that’s going to England with her sir. Are you all right, sir? You okay?
Jim: I’m incarcerated, Lloyd! I don’t deserve to lose my daughter over this. I don’t deserve to have you as my go-between. And I can’t for the life of me figure out how she could choose to champion mediocrity the way she’s learned to around you.
Lloyd: I have a letter from your daughter. Do you want it? I don’t know which version she sent.
Jim: “You can’t know the horrible disappointment I feel…”
Lloyd: I know this part, keep reading.
Jim: She can’t still be angry at this, it’s gotta get better.
Lloyd: It does, it does if it’s the version signed ‘I still can’t help loving you’. It gets better.
Jim: Just her name.
Lloyd: Just knowing a version like that exists, knowing that for a minute that she felt that and wrote ‘I still can’t help loving you’. That’s gotta be a good thing, right? That’s gotta be a good thing.
Neither Lloyd nor Dean are particularly inclined to look matter-of-factly at the concept of dying. Their resistance to the old age that more often than not precedes death is very much in keeping with their estrangement from the future. Lloyd is uncomfortable around old people because old age is a nagging reminder his time is limited. It dares point out what he’s got to look forward to should his gamble not pay off.
Lloyd: I used to work at a smorgasbord, and, and the old people would flock there, and, and they loved to eat. And they just jammed their mouths, you know? They used to eat with their mouths open, and you know, it’s just too much for me. You get to be thinking about how short life is, and how maybe, maybe everything has no meaning because you wake up and you’re frying burgers. And you’re like sixty and seventy and then you check out, and, you know, what are you doing, and I just don’t need to think about those kinds of things.
Dean’s warding off of the future is made foolproof by his constancy. All it takes for him is to focus on the present with the utmost abandon for everything else to fall into place. All it takes is the right measure of denial.
Cindy: They’re old. Would you wanna live like that?
Dean: What, in that home? Well, no. But I’m not getting old. And he’s a dummy for dying.
Cindy: Oh, Walter is a dummy for dying? What are you gonna do, wiseguy?
Dean: Not do it. You’re gonna die?
Cindy: Definitely.
Dean: Hmmm? What did you say?
Cindy: I said definitely.
Dean: Well, with that kind of attitude, you will. Don’t do it. It’s for suckers. Don’t do it.
Cindy: What are you gonna do?
Dean: Just not do it.
Whereas Lloyd is supposedly looking for ‘a dare to be great situation,’ Dean seems to be far easier to please. He wants unconditional, steady love to match the one he has to give.
Most people reach to varying extents. In reaching, they are subjected to complications and then adjustments. A love life (later, domestic life) is meant to be a modest slice in a pie chart. It’s meant to be one side of the die. Cindy and Diane both understand that. They juggle multiple storylines, they’re constantly given something else to contend with. They’re multifaceted characters. Cindy once wanted to be a doctor, now works as a nurse. She dated a wrestler, witnessed an ugly relationship at home, cared for her grandmother, met someone new and got pregnant. Diane was valedictorian of her high school, was up for a prestigious fellowship, won that fellowship. She was secretly admired by a boy, and then not so secretly, she had a legally troubled father she thought the world of. They both knew, faced and accepted change. Change is an inherent part of both their landscapes. Whereas Lloyd and Dean merely orbit, ever focused on their respective suns.
There’s a reason why they’re endangered. By giving their love so freely, so generously, little remains for their own ration. Self love is compromised, and in turn, outside opinion, respect and admiration. Those, active ingredients in the concoction we understand to be love. There is, it appears, in practical terms, a limit to the love that can be given.
Lloyd is protected from the depths of desolation possibly in store for the likes of him by a story that never stops looking out for him, by an audience that never stops rooting for him.
Dean doesn’t share in the same good fortune. I’ve yet to stop thinking about him as though he were a real person roaming the earth and I’ve yet to stop wishing he finds a way towards his best, most well-rounded self which might lead to the happiness he so richly deserves.
[Click on the thumbnail for a larger view]
This post is the creative work of Iris Watts Hirideyo and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Movies, characters, Say Anything, Blue Valentine, Lloyd, Dean, Diane, Cindy, love, romantic, virtue, flaw, perfect, guy, prince, charming, self-love, well-rounded
Permanent Link
