Runner

Writer/director Marian Mathias

actress Hannah Schiller

Mathias with producer Joy Jorgensen

Jorgensen and Mathias

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

RUNNER                   B                                                                                                             USA  France  Germany  (76 mi)  2022  d: Marian Mathias

Shot on grainy 16mm by Jomo Fray with an almost square screen, nearly every shot of this low-budget film is accentuated darkness, among the darkest films on record, with barely any hint of light or signs of hope, while the flat landscape of a nameless place in Missouri reveals nothing but foreboding skies, creating a grim, yet austere frame for this near wordless film drenched in poetic imagery, resembling the abstract mosaic of Terrence Malick’s To the Wonder (2012), where the overpowering force of nature dwarfs any human presence, yet a two-story farmhouse home rises elegantly in its statuesque stillness, the only home seen for miles in an isolated community composed of mostly German immigrant families.  What’s different is an ominous presence of gloom that mysteriously inundates the screen instead of the luminous beauty in Malick.  This dour outlook may take viewers by surprise, refusing to tell a conventional story, or write intelligible dialogue, allowing the pictures to tell the story, with overcast skies leading to downpours of rain, casting a bleak shadow on the itinerant lives that grace the screen.  More abstract than a typical first feature, yet the concise nature of this 75-minute film eliminates all excess and sentimentality, becoming an exercise in brevity, where you have to admire the tenacity of making a film few will ever see, with no real character development or drama, yet it's starkly different from anything else out there, so film festivals may be the only available outlet.  Haas (Hannah Schiller), meaning rabbit or runner in Dutch, is a tender 18-year old girl raised by a cantankerous single father, Alvin (Jonathan Erickson Eisley), who seems to be something of an alcoholic con man or schemer, trying to swindle money out of people that don’t have it, specifically targeting the local preacher, showing up with his daughter in church, then singling him out after the services, pestering him with fabricated land opportunities, trying to entice him in his latest financial scheme, but the preacher deftly avoids him, claiming it’s God’s day.  So instead Alvin spends the day getting drunk in a local bar, muttering to himself when he loses his key and is locked out of his own home, so he breaks a window and crawls in, immediately calling the preacher on the phone at his home, blabbing away with no real regard to whoever’s listening, revealing just how alienated and reclusive he’s become, using the preacher as some sort of sounding board for his cockamamie ideas and stream-of-conscious ramblings until the preacher hangs up on him, leaving him alone in the dark.  Soon afterwards he tumbles from the top of the stairs, falling to his death, as a few neighbors congregate on the bottom edge of the frame, where only the backs of their heads are seen, a Greek chorus arriving and staring at their empty mansion, busybodies gossiping about what happened, wondering if he would have died if the girl was home, wondering where she was and why she was away.  It’s a sad state of affairs, with death adding a dismal edge to the already gloomy atmosphere, where Haas is often seen trudging through the desolate roads, a solitary figure walking long distances on her own, becoming a defining motif.  Receiving a 30% tax credit from the State of Illinois, the dreary windswept landscape resembles Béla Tarr’s The Turin Horse (2011), another father and daughter team on the edge of the apocalypse, where the oppressive force of nature continually closes in on them.  

Haas quickly learns that the bank is about to foreclose on their home due to unpaid back payments, while it was her father’s wish to be buried in his home town, a tiny Illinois hamlet along the Mississippi River, traveling with the coffin by train, including a shot from the darkness of an open door on the train looking down on the illuminated world outside, reminiscent of a similar shot in John Ford’s THE SEARCHERS (1956), where the only available housing is a decrepit old boarding house, described as an inn, run by a fussy old geezer (Gene Jones) who spends his time dozing off on the couch while watching old black and white movies on TV.  The emptiness of the surroundings couldn’t be more austere, with barely any trees on the horizon, just empty cornfields, with Haas seen walking along an isolated rural road, when a man on a bicycle offers to give her a ride, as it’s about to storm.  By the time they get to the protective shelter of the inn both are drenched from a downpour, with her newfound friend, Will (Darren Houle), waiting out the storm until he can safely return home, needing to get to work the next morning.  Haas, left to bury her father alone, is disappointed that the burial keeps getting postponed due to inclement weather conditions, as the graves fill with water during the storms, needing time to dry out, extending her time spent in what seems like the middle of nowhere.  One could easily understand why her father felt the need to move away, as there is nothing holding anyone to this community.  Haas meets Will again, spending time romping through the cornfields, opening up to each other, discovering hidden secrets, yet it’s not the conversation that elicits information, instead the imagery infuses the film with the first signs of anything resembling hope, even as the darkened skies continue to provide an oppressive tone, concentrating on immense cloud formations, where the skies take up more than 90% of the frame, leaving humans on the ground submerged in the enormity of their surroundings.  While there’s a poetic interplay in the cornfields where he teaches her to sing I Saw the Light (Remastered) - YouTube (2:43), a country gospel song with a gritty working class sentiment, sung by a faithless man searching for redemption, they quickly learn about each other’s lives, both distanced and estranged from their families, with Will frequently calling home in the solitary confines of his room, sending them money, remaining connected with the people that matter to him, yet he continues to find work in distant places, like migrant workers following the seasons, where this blustery cold fails to provide many opportunities.  He repairs an old bike from a junk pile so he and Haas can ride their bikes together, exploring the barren roads in long silences, often resembling the last two souls living on earth.  The aching loneliness of their lives defines who they are, and connects them in small ways, never really expressing romantic inclinations, remaining tenuous at best, but there are no other emotional connections in the entire film, making them the centerpiece of a largely untold drama, awakening feelings both felt no longer existed, stirring something deep in their souls, but neither one seems inclined to act on it.  Instead, the darkened imagery of the immensely flat landscape holds sway over everything we see, with brief musical interludes from Para One, who composed the music for Céline Sciamma’s Petite Maman (2021).     

By the time Alvin is actually buried Haas has lost interest, having showed up so many times, only to be told the burial would be delayed, leaving a kind of numb experience, as if disconnected from the world, where a looming departure is uneventful, feeling inevitable.  Will takes a job on a Mississippi riverboat that floats up and down the river in a neverending journey, allowing him to watch the continuously elusive shoreline from the decks, a veritable Huckleberry Finn adventure, never intermingling with the river towns that dot the shoreline.  This adds a dreaminess quality to the film, drifting along the river, always distanced from what he sees, with lights along the shore appearing like specks in the dark.  When Haas returns home, back to the same house, the neighbors re-appear on the edge of the frame, describing her pitiful state, having no one left in the world, where the repossession of the home looms over the horizon and could happen any day now.  The preacher describes the distressing mental state of her father as “his roof wasn’t nailed tight,” claiming someone needed to tell her the truth, but it’s probably nothing she doesn’t already know, as the instability of the surrounding world is slowly creeping in on her, thinking of Will, with visions of him watching the shoreline from the boat, perhaps looking for her face, leaving her hopeful for the future and the possibilities that may await her.  Searching for herself in all the photographs and memorabilia, the film raises the existential question of where she really belongs, and just what exactly is her community.  The Greek chorus of onlookers don’t appear invested in her life, watching from afar, never offering to help, never once befriending her in her loneliness and grief, leaving her to wallow in her own sorrows on her own.  Train whistles can be heard off in the distance, as if beckoning her to take another journey, to experience life outside the smothering claustrophobic walls of a house that doesn’t even belong to her, yet it’s all she knows.  Then, inexplicably, she bolts out the door, running as fast as she can, chasing that elusive dream that lies just ahead of her, as a freight train meanders over the horizon, and flocks of geese fly in formation across the sky.  The loneliness and complete isolation of these lives become an exploration of tenderness and quiet desperation, yet may not be a film for everyone, requiring patience and reflection, as it’s never emotionally engaging or dramatically compelling, but lures us in from the power of the imagery, resembling the month of November, eloquently recalled in a scene from Sydney Pollack’s THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR (1975) when Robert Redford describes what he sees in the black and white photographs of Faye Dunaway, “You take pictures, beautiful pictures, but of empty streets, and trees with no leaves on them.  Not quite winter, they look like November.  Not autumn, not winter, in between,” also reminiscent of the stark emptiness of Andrew Wyeth landscape paintings, Andrew Wyeth. Christina's World. 1948 - MoMA.  Almost entirely a state of mind, this film pushes the edges of what a film can be, reduced to a bare minimalism, yet the essence of the film is unrealized possibilities, where a murky ambiguity clouds the troubled early days of a coming-of-age story.

Mud

MUD               A-                   

USA  (130 mi)  2012  d:  Jeff Nichols 

In Huckleberry Finn I have drawn Tom Blankenship exactly as he was. He was ignorant, unwashed, insufficiently fed; but he had as good a heart as ever any boy had. His liberties were totally unrestricted. He was the only really independent person—boy or man—in the community, and by consequence he was tranquilly and continuously happy and envied by the rest of us. And as his society was forbidden us by our parents the prohibition trebled and quadrupled its value, and therefore we sought and got more of his society than any other boy’s.

—from Mark Twain’s Autobiography, initially published in 1924, his description of childhood friend Tom Blankenship, used as the inspiration for the character Huck Finn, the real-life son of a sawmill laborer and sometime drunkard named Woodson Blankenship, who lived in a “ramshackle” house near the Mississippi River behind the house where Twain grew up in Hannibal, Missouri

Jeff Nichols has become what we all hoped indie director David Gordon Green would become before he developed a taste for making mainstream movies, a fiercely independent artist firmly rooted into the rural American soil of his films, finding unconventional stories through people living on the edge.  Like Green, Nichols is also a graduate of the North Carolina School of the Arts, where much of this resembles the Southern Gothic look of the dilapidated rural poor in Green’s UNDERTOW (2004), which happened to be produced by Terrence Malick, filming his first and third films in his home state of Arkansas while also sharing Green’s musical composer, David Wingo, with a healthy dose of the alternative country band Lucero thrown in, as the front man of the group, Ben Nichols, is the director’s brother.  Nichols also borrows the youngest brother, Tye Sheridan, from Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life (2011), who is nothing short of brilliant in the lead role of only his second film, while also using Malick’s producer, Sarah Green.  Sheridan will, interestingly enough, be working with David Gordon Green, and also Nicolas Cage playing an ex-con (yes, it's a stretch), in his next film Joe (2013). The other major influence on the film is Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, especially the use of the river, both as a mystical symbol of freedom, but it also provides a colorful setting in this small Arkansas town, a portrait of reality in the everyday lives of people trying to make a living off of it.  From the outset, the river, as in Huckleberry Finn, is fraught with danger, but also adventure, where two best friend 14-year old boys, Tye as Ellis and Jacob Lofland as Neckbone, live with their families working the river and spend their free time on Ellis’s boat exploring the nearby tributaries of the Mississippi River, never actually venturing to the Mississippi itself, seen looming ominously off in the distance. 

While exploring a seemingly deserted island, they discover a house boat stuck in the upper branches of a tree, as if left there by a flood.  Inside the boat, they discover pornographic magazines, but also a current food supply, suggesting someone’s already living there.  Running back to their boat, they find a filthy, ragged looking man standing beside it fishing, introducing himself as Mud (Matthew McConaughey) in a friendly and non-threatening manner, telling them he’s there waiting on the island for someone.  The more they learn about this guy, the more curious Ellis grows, like an unraveling adventure story, as his own life is a mess, with his parents splitting up and getting a divorce, where afterwards the government will likely take their family’s boathouse on the river, while Neckbone, who lives with his uncle (Michael Shannon), is more suspicious.  To them, Mud is an enigma, a man seemingly living by his wits out in the wild that needs some help, claiming he’s trying to reunite with his lost love, the girl of his dreams, Juniper (Reese Witherspoon).  Mud asks the boys to help bring him food and supplies, claiming he needs to fix up the boat to make their getaway, but if they help, he’ll give Neckbone the gun he keeps tucked into the back of his pants.  Even after finding out Mud killed a man that was physically abusing Juniper, tracking him down in the state of Texas and shooting him, where he’s now an outlaw and a wanted man, this notion of manly protection and true love captivates the imagination of Ellis, whose own home life is in turmoil, with his parents giving up on love and barely speaking, while at the same time he meets an older girl in town, May Pearl (Bonnie Sturdivant), quickly grabbing her attention when he sees her getting hassled on the street and punches a guy that was giving her trouble, a guy several years older.  Through Mud, Ellis identifies with the idea of a man standing up for love, and even fighting for it, if necessary.  

One of the better indie films seen in almost a year, though told fairly straightforwardly like a family drama, Nichols is an intelligent filmmaker with a beautifully poetic, naturalistic style, where all the performances are perfectly understated, especially Sheridan as Ellis, who couldn’t be more compelling, as he risks quite a bit for a man he barely knows, quickly entering a grown up world without really understanding how it works.  When he discovers Juniper is living in a motel near a local Piggly Wiggly grocery store, Mud has him deliver her a message, where the atmospheric mood of the film establishes the mindset and influences the action of the film, as Ellis rushes headlong into the developing fray, unaware of the traps being set by the family of the killed man, where Joe Don Baker, Tennessee sheriff Buford Pusser in WALKING TALL (1973) and out of the public eye for years, is the creepy family patriarch.  At the same time, none other than Sam Shepard is the mysterious loner living across the river from Ellis, curiously enough named Tom Blankenship, Twain’s childhood friend, who helps create a clearer picture of Mud, as he’s the closest thing to being his father.  But knowing Juniper is in the picture, Tom senses little can become of it except more trouble, suggesting that’s the truth of the matter, that she finds one ornery bastard after another just so Mud will beat the living crap out of him, taking some peculiar satisfaction out of that while Mud ends up hiding out in the middle of nowhere with the wrath of God waiting for him.  It’s all too confounding for Ellis, who believes they really love each other, which is the reason he’s risking his neck for the guy, as otherwise all the love has dried up in his life, where even his own father (Ray McKinnon) urges him not to place his trust in it.  This is not your typical coming-of-age tale, where these two kids are wise beyond their years, shown with a rarely seen complexity and grace, but still Ellis’s child’s eye view appropriately mixes the confusion about adult relationships with his own painfully naïve experiences with girls, where the visual poetry of the film helps express the underlying desperation he feels in witnessing the only world he knows slowly disappear.  Nichols has become one of the most assured indie directors working today, where perhaps the Palme D’Or success at Cannes of Malick’s 2011 Top Ten Films of the Year #1 The Tree of Life and Benh Zeitlin’s Sundance winner 2012 Top Ten List #1 Beasts of the Southern Wild have spurred a resurgence in American independent cinema, where even David Gordon Green may be attempting to return to his Southern Gothic roots.