Father Hunger in "The Place Beyond The Pines."

*Warning. Contains spoilers*

"The Place Beyond The Pines" is where son's need their fathers. This is a beautiful movie driven by one central concept, "father hunger." The hunger to be one and the hunger to have one. The penultimate protagonist of the film, Luke, played expertly by the deeply impressive Ryan Gosling never had a relationship with his father and carries the trauma of that unrealized relationship around with him. Life has gone desperately wrong for him without a father to identify with and guide him. He is an outlaw and a rolling stone. However, deep seated longings for the family he never had are ignited when he learns of the existence of his son. "My dad was never around and look what happened to me. I don't want him to end up like me" he tells the mother of his one year old son, Romina (Eva Mendez). In other words he doesn't want to transmit his trauma to his child by being an absent or good for nothing father. He tries desperately to be a father and win her back. He quits his unpredictable life as an exceptionally skilled motor bike acrobat for the carnival, and gets a minimum wage job, supplementing his income with the occassional bank robbery made possible by speedy motor bike escapes.

However, he's too impulsive, damaged and angry and is fighting a losing battle against himself and Kofi, (Mahereshala Ali) the man Romina lives with who is the stable provider Luke can never hope to be. As this realization dawns on him, his desperation and hunger to have a family and connect with his son spirals out of control into a tragic breakdown: an assault on Kofi and ending in suicide by cop. Avery (Bradley Cooper), who also has a one year old son at the time is the cop who puts Luke out of his misery.

Avery, as a father becomes deeply identified with his victim-father when he learns about the family Luke leaves behind and racked with guilt at robbing a little boy of his father. His own little boy becomes a constant reminder of what he has done. Thus, he is never able to connect with his own son, AJ who bears the brunt of his guilty conscience ie, his disavowed guilt, and is victimized and pushed away by Avery. Instead, in an effort to please and connect with his own father, a State Supreme Court judge, Avery takes advantage of the tragedy to further his career in politics.

 It is only towards the end of the movie, when he finally confesses to Jason (Luke's son) and repents for impulsively shooting Luke that he gains redemption and (one presumes) will now be able to repair his relationship with and save AJ who is steadily heading towards his own tragedy. Avery's confession also redeems Jason, who has been carrying the unspoken trauma of shame and guilt for his family, who never speak of his criminal father, "the motor bandit." In a stunningly beautiful scene at the end of the film Jason rides off heading west on a bike his father would have given him in metaphorical unity and identification with a dead father who, tragically, was never capable of providing what he needed from him in life, but does so in death. Perhaps Jason will escape his father's fate. Perhaps not. That question is left to linger in our minds as we walk out of the theater deeply moved by this epic film.