Robert here with my series Distant Relatives, which explores the connections between one classic and one contemporary film.

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Blue Valentine explore the same territory but come at it from entirely different angles. Woolf is deliberately theatrical, full of delightfully big performances, long monologues, and crescendoing clashes. Everything that's wrong with George and Martha's relationship gets said and said again. Blue Valentine is insistently realistic, filled with small moments and quiet regrets. All that's wrong with Dean and Cindy's relationship is encompassed by things gone unsaid. Ultimately though, both are marriages on the brink of collapse, a subject covered many times since the invention of film, or the narrative story itself. What makes Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and Blue Valentine interesting companion pieces is that both juxtapose a middle-aged couple with a young couple.

A Tale of Four Couples

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, introduces us to the middle-aged collegiate couple George and Martha (Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, of course) as they're introducing themselves to a younger couple Nick and Honey (George Segal, Sandy Dennis). Nick is a new teacher at the school, filled with ambition. George is not. Honey is a fragile little thing. Martha is not. Over the course of one night filled with lots of booze and BS, both relationship, but particularly George and Martha's, for that's the important one, will be bent to their breaking point. The middle-aged couple in Blue Valentine are Dean and Cindy (Ryan Gosling, Michelle Williams). Dean is a bit of a layabout and treats life as if it were as easy as he wishes it were. This leaves the majority of the work to fall to Cindy who can't really find the time in her schedule for anything resembling fun and at this point has pretty much given up on wanting to. And the young couple in Blue Valentine are the same Dean and Cindy, at the beginning of their life together, filled with love and optimism. It's not a "feel-good picture."

This isn't to say that the young Dean and Cindy are directly equatable to Nick and Honey or that the older Dean and Cindy are the same as George and Martha... (more after the jump)