Thanks in large part to the Gosling character, who may be a lovable loser but is still a loser who I would place the lion's share of blame on. Not that he's a bad guy--he does try, but he's still a loser.

Gosling's Dean is a loser, I suppose, but he's got something that I find awkwardly charming: a naive wish for things to be as they were. Naturally it topples over into the realm of "pathetic" but, in the probable NC-17 scene in The Future Room, he's driven by an odd, kinda sweet kinda violent, hope.

That said, the brunt of the failure does appear to be due to his inertia. And the vacancy in Cindy's eyes and expression during the "Present Time" scenes are something that I always nervously watch for in my wife. One can feel lucky, one can be lucky, and the movie reminded me that I need to understand enough never to ask "What can I do to be a better husband?"

She has a telling quote very early in the movie, when he has the kid eating the cereal off the table (wtf)--something to the point of not wanting to have to raise two kids. That's basically what he was--a big kid, naive, reckless, immature, unfocused, unprepared. He's still one step up from the sadistic wrestler but it doesn't take too long to realize that an intelligent and driven woman like Williams' character could never be happy with a charming but aimless and immature goofball.

Cindy worries that Dean starts up his drinking at 8am. He, in tragicomic defense, claims he has the "luxury to start drinking at 8am". But the movie isn't about his spiral down into alcohol or dramatically-mineable infidelities. They got married for two different reasons but it's not necessarily Dean that stalls Cindy -- she could have gone on to medical school, she could have gone through with the abortion... she's got her own kind of inertia. Dean isn't a prize but Cindy wasn't forced into becoming a doormat.

I think to start placing blame for the failed marriage is a disservice to the film. I don't think the movie is really interested in who is at fault, but more about painting a picture of two people who are essentially good people that make mistakes, rush into marriage, and fail at it. It isn't necessarily always someone's fault. Sometimes marriage just doesn't work. That's a difficult thing to convey in film (you almost always have one of the two as the villain) so honestly. Like major said, they got married for two completely different reasons, but those reasons came from a place of kindness. That isn't reason enough to rush into a marriage that's going to fail, but it's understandable given what we know about these characters. Their marriage is one of dependency, not love. Eventually that dependency turned into resentment and anger.

Gosling's Dean may be a loser in the sense of what he's done with his career, but he's a nice guy. He's the kind of guy that will help an unknown, alone old man set up his new room in the retirement home, just because no one else will (a scene that, by the way, had both my girlfriend and I in a puddle of tears). That's the kind of genuine kindness that I love seeing. He has the capability to honestly do something for someone else when there is little-to-no benefit to himself. So sure, he's an aimless guy, but one that's also a good person, father, and husband. He's trying to make his marriage work, Cindy has already checked out. He's the kind of person who is willing to attempt to bear the burden for someone else, even if that attempt ends in failure. He's a guy I want to succeed because he's genuinely good. It's tragic that he ends up the way he ends up.

In a movie so invested in real emotion and its motivations, the best thing it does is contrast emotional acts like sex and violence. Those actions taking place in the past are contrasted with them happening in the present. In the context of the story, the motivations behind these actions tell us exactly why these two people fell in love, and exactly why their marriage didn't work. Is gives us honest, legitimate reasons as to why these two so desperately needed each other, and how that need ended up dooming them.

I agree that he's a good person--the nursing home scene is a great example of his decency and concern for others. To say he's a loser isn't to say he's a bad person, just that he's a loser. I disagree about him being a good father and husband, though--he's an alcoholic who is too immature to be a good father figure--he's just a 'buddy', and one who always reeks of alcohol. That's cute when the kid is 6 but what about when she's 15? And he refuses to strive for a better job, doing more menial (and lower paying) work and letting his wife do the heavy-lifting in terms of professional earnings. He's completely closed to the notion that he should actually try to do something with his life other than spending his days drinking, clowning around with his daughter, and doing menial work.