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. 

Wild

Author Cheryl Strayed (left) and actress Reese Witherspoon  

Cheryl Strayed  

WILD              B-                   

USA  (115 mi)  2014  ‘Scope  d:  Jean-Marc Vallée          Official site

I chose to tell myself a different story from the one women are told.

—Cheryl Strayed, author of Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, 2012

Adapted from the 2012 memoir, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed, this is a case where literature is the better format than film, as most of the story is told through seemingly disconnected, stream-of-conscious thoughts that continually feel fragmented in the film, randomly pulled together through music and flashback sequences, but it all feels so cliché’d, especially the choices of music, which are mere snippets, where the audience never gets a feel for how or why this journey is so essential, other than on a superficial level.  It’s not unusual for people’s lives to fall apart from time to time, but this is certainly an unusual method to put the missing pieces back together again.  By the end, despite the grand poetic gesture, supposedly finding transcendence in the final moment, there’s little reason to believe this character is really any different, as she’s always been the sum of her parts.  The film pales in comparison to the male counterpart, Sean Penn’s Into the Wild (2007), where the characters throughout are more deeply fleshed out and complex, offering more memorable performances, where here it feels more like a mother and daughter film, where neither one is fully revealed, but remain abstract configurations.  Reese Witherspoon purchased the rights to the book, while Oprah listed it on her Oprah's Book Club 2.0 in June, 2012, becoming a #1 best seller for seven weeks, where Witherspoon plays the lead character (author Cheryl Strayed) and is also a producer on the film.  While the backstory is only revealed in flashback, the film counts off the days in 1995 as 26-year old Cheryl begins her journey alone in the Mohave Desert near the Mexican border and follows the Pacific Crest Trail through the mountainous terrain of the Sierra Nevada in California and the southern end of the Cascade Range in Oregon, where hikers have to make sure they complete enough miles every day to reach the opposite end of the trail before weather conditions make snowy sections impassable, targeting several resupply points en route to stock up on food and water, until reaching the Bridge of the Gods traversing the Columbia River at the border of Washington, the lowest elevation of the entire 1100-mile journey that took over 3-months.  While the feat is not to be minimized, something very few could actually accomplish, nonetheless the film itself minimizes the difficulty of the journey and instead attempts to reveal the unfolding narrative through the restlessness anxiety of her interior world.    

While Cheryl Strayed is a novelist and essayist, someone extremely familiar with words and language, this adaptation by Nick Hornby is a poor substitute, as the various sequences never feel connected, but remain isolated moments, as people Cheryl meets along the road simply vanish from view without a word, where they, along with her memories, are like ghosts following her along the trail, where they never materialize into living, breathing human beings that matter to the audience.  Instead, the camera focuses entirely on Cheryl 100% of the time, where everything else is incidental, even the vastness of the wilderness, beautifully photographed by Yves Bélanger, where despite the continuing timeline, there is no real comprehension of time and distance, as the film really takes place inside her head.  While the experience is a document of mood swings, resembling Danny Boyle’s 127 HOURS (2010), it lacks that film’s intensity and sense of desperation as well as the degree of difficulty encountered, though both rely upon the interior world of flashbacks.  In the end it becomes a road movie, where Cheryl’s initial encounters with her own naiveté reflect just how angry and unprepared she is to make such an extreme journey, where the F-word is littered throughout, but she receives needed help and excellent advice along the way.  One of the more unusual scenes is seeing Cheryl and Paul (Thomas Sadoski), her husband of seven years, getting matching tattoos, something they can share forever even as it comes on the day they are getting divorced.  Their familiarity with each other is touching, especially when Cheryl acknowledges she cheated on him, obviously recognizing the cost at that moment, adding that she actually cheated on him a lot.  This may be their closest moment together throughout the film, though it only hints at her own personal descent into reckless drug abuse and a rampant proclivity for sleeping around with any man that so much as looks at her.  Much of these self-destructive experiences are narrated as she hikes along the trail, becoming a parallel world of soul searching through her past that she carries with her throughout her long and arduous ordeal.

Perhaps the heart of the film is her close relationship with her mother Bobbi, Laura Dern, who rescued her and her little brother from an abusive and alcoholic father, yet maintained her dignity and self-esteem throughout the ensuing years of struggle, sacrificing all to make sure her children had a brighter future than her own, suggesting she would never change a thing if it produced something as beautiful as her two children, but she dies quickly at the age of 45 after being diagnosed with lung cancer, fueling a period of rage and self-destruction.  Her own history of sexual violation leaves her even more exposed as a lone traveler through such remote territory, where she has to instantly assess her encounters with various men, where the possibility of sexual violence is always on the back of her mind, yet it’s the terrain she’s chosen to navigate on her own terms.  What’s perhaps most surprising is how few negative encounters she has, where most everyone she meets is helpful and overly friendly, except for a couple of leering, beer guzzling DELIVERANCE (1972) guys carrying bows and arrows, who find it most peculiar to run into a woman alone in the woods, though we never get a clear picture of just how much time is spent alone.  When she wanders into the heart of civilization, where a guy is passing out flyers for a musical tribute to Jerry Garcia, who just passed away, she jolts at the closeness of his physical presence, something she’s obviously not been used to for several months, where she has to recalibrate her bearings.  But apparently it’s like riding a bike, as in no time she’s hopped into the sack with the same guy, heading back out the next morning.  Particularly because she crosses through some of the prime real estate for pot growing in America, one wonders what might have been cleaned up for the movie, as drug use is not uncommon for back packers in that neck of the woods, but this subject is completely glossed over without incident.  While we assume Cheryl has gone through some psychological trajectory, this is never evident, though a final sequence attempts to grow increasingly transcendent without ever actually rising to the moment.  It recalls a more dramatically compelling bridge sequence at the end of Chris Eyre’s SMOKE SIGNALS (1997), where both films attempt to reconcile the violence and discord of their pasts with a Siddhartha-like moment of self-realization. 

Young Adult

YOUNG ADULT                    C                    

USA  (94 mi)  2011  d:  Jason Reitman                         Official site

Oh where, Oh where has Charlize Theron gone?  Since winning the Academy Award for Best Actress in MONSTER (2003), she has all but dropped off the face of the earth, barely seen since then, working in such low profile films that many haven’t seen her at all since then.  She is back in a role that is pretty much written around her part, aka:  confessions of a psycho bitch from Diablo Cody, who is attempting to glean untold truths from the safe and secure mediocrity of the heartland.  Theron as Mavis is on the rebound after her failed marriage, one of the few who left her small town of Mercury, Minnesota to make it in the urban metropolis of Minneapolis, affectionately known as the Mini Apple, a place that few in Mercury ever see.  Mavis is the author of teen stories that are no longer in vogue, yet she’s busily typing away on her computer trying to complete the series, which is a running narrative throughout the film which mirrors the real life issues surrounding Mavis.  This is largely an opportunity lost, as the book characters offer no fresh insight into real life, but remains lost in a superficial wish fulfillment haze of self-centeredness that defines Mavis’s own world.  And therein lies the real problem with this film, as it’s stuck in a vacuous emptiness from which it rarely escapes.  Post divorce, Mavis is on a mission, to return to her hometown and reclaim her high school boyfriend Buddy (Patrick Wilson), even though he’s happily married with a newborn.  She makes this clear while throwing down tequila chasers in a bar one night, confessing her plan to a guy she went to high school with, Matt (Patton Oswalt), perhaps the most refreshing character in the film, seen as a loser in high school, a guy whose locker was next to hers but she never gave him a second look as she was a high school beauty queen that rarely thought of anyone except herself.  Nothing has changed in that department, while others around her have matured and become more responsible citizens, which she ridicules endlessly as a town full of losers. 

Mavis’s answer to everything is to fill herself full of liquor, which she does pretty much every day, falling face first into her bed at night without ever crawling under the covers.  Like Reese Witherspoon in LEGALLY BLONDE (2001), she has a tiny dog that you can carry around in the palm of your hand that she all but ignores.  Matt becomes her regular drinking buddy, where he conveniently has a homemade whisky still in his garage and the two commiserate about his loser life in high school and her narcissistic intentions with a married man that seem wacko.  The excessive amount of liquor consumption is a fairly standard device in the movies these days, which doesn’t seem to find alcoholism the least bit offensive or obnoxious, treating it as an opportunity for the characters to get more chummy and honest.  In Matt’s case, this may be true, as he’s strictly a side character whose role becomes more relevant due to his genuine earnestness, while Mavis never for a single moment stops thinking of herself, like a smug and pampered rich bitch that treats everyone around her like crap, thinking their lives are little more than boring and miserable, where their freedom is typically hampered by having annoying babies.  Her plan is to swoop in and rescue Buddy from this dreaded fate, knowing he would drop everything to run away with her.  This is a strange take on the American Dream, which Mavis has appropriated as doing whatever she wants at everyone else’s expense.           

While there are a few comical gestures, mostly in the exaggerated MEAN GIRL (2004) cruelty of Mavis’s derision of others, spoken mostly when drunk, as if this actually opens up possibilities for speaking candidly, but most may be surprised at how quietly unfunny this film actually is, as it’s more awkward and uncomfortable than funny, like watching a train wreck waiting to happen.  Had there been more revelations, one can endure plenty of uncomfortable moments, but this film is as vacuous as it seems, where the empty-headed character who spends all her time accessorizing with manicures and pedicures and buying new clothes for herself really never gets below the surface, as she’s pretty much the same vain egotist she was in high school, where her good looks have allowed her to get away with anything.  The way she stuffs herself with junk food and candy, not to mention plenty of alcohol, it’s a stretch to believe she never gains any weight.  But this is Charlize Theron we’re talking about, who dons several different flirtatious and beguiling looks and still looks terrific when hung over in the morning.  All in all, little happens, little is learned, and little changes, where the movie is basically a window into small town America as seen through the eyes of an overly pampered Barbie doll with a love for booze and spewing venom about the wretched and miserable lives of others, all the while blind to how pathetic her own miserable life has become.  She is a perennial user, a blood sucker, a parasite, the kind of girl who survives by manipulating others to get what she wants.  In the end all we can ask is so what?  Why should we care? 

Election

ELECTION                             B+                  

USA  (103 mi)  1999  ‘Scope  d:  Alexander Payne

I really must insist you help me win the election tomorrow because I deserve it.     

—Tracy Flick (Reese Witherspoon) in a plea to God for help

An early dose of Alexander Payne’s medicine, still, in my view, his best film, which features a mix of biting, sarcastic humor that comes close to caricature right alongside humans sliding into the abyss of their moral fallibility, literally paying a price for their horrible mistakes in life.  It’s a difficult line to straddle, as the tone is light and breezy, a reflection of Middle America, where people work hard to earn a living and establish good social standing, yet somehow remain vulnerable to life’s temptations.  This film shows how easy it is for anyone to cave in to sleazy, unethical behavior when it presents itself and then live the rest of their lives in denial about it.  Matthew Broderick plays Mr. McAllister, a high school history teacher who enjoys his work, as it gives him a sense of importance and responsibility, but living in Omaha, Nebraska, nothing controversial or earth shattering ever happens, so he’s developed a tired sense of routine, sensing nothing exciting will ever come his way, weighed down by his loveless and childless marriage.  Reese Witherspoon is pitch perfect as Tracy Flick, an iconic Type A over-achiever in sweater vests, so believable that she steals the picture and makes this one of her most memorable roles, the blond, ruthlessly competitive, over eager high school student running for student council president, the creepy kind of girl that always raises her hand in class and has that plastic, phony smile stamped on her face, who never says no to an opportunity so long as she can be in charge, heading more than half a dozen activities after school.  This is a girl with a cheerful and ready answer for just about anything, but who quite calculatingly would also step over anyone to get her way and certainly wasn’t going to let a cute, popular athlete jeopardize her chance of winning something that rightfully belongs to her, a position she’s spent her LIFE preparing for, as she’s prim, proper, poised, polite, well—perfect with her Pick Flick buttons and cupcakes.  Because of her manic and irritating way of literally taking control, most people simply leave her alone and don’t stand in her way, allowing her to think she’s accomplishing something when the truth is closer to nothing ever changes, at least not in Omaha.   

Mr. McAllister has a chip on his shoulder and already holds a grudge against Tracy, as he’s seen what she can do when his supposedly happily married best friend, a fellow teacher at his school, was fired after it was discovered he was concealing a sexual relationship with Tracy, claiming they were “in love.”  Tracy never claimed she was coerced, admitted it was consensual, but she’s underage so clearly she’s the victim, yet Mr. McAllister continues to harbor misogynist feelings as he laments the loss of his friend, somehow blaming Tracy who’s now running unopposed for class president, a position that works closely with Mr. McAllister in the upcoming year, a thought he dreads with a passion.  With that in mind, he encourages another student to run against her, Paul Metzler (Chris Klein), a dim but likeable jock who suffered a season ending injury while skiing in the off season, feeling a void in his life without athletics.  This only fires up Tracy, who vows to work even harder, driven by the corporate example of how Coca Cola remains number one, as they outspend their competition.  An interesting device used by the director is his multiple use of interior narration, where the inner thoughts of several characters are exposed revealing their true motives and intentions, also a freeze frame technique where time is literally stopped while a character explains themselves in greater detail.  What we discover is a layer of hidden ulterior motives, largely fed by self centered impulses, tucked underneath the artificial exterior that we use to show the world who we are.  In this film, it’s hard to tell which is the real person, the one they want to be, or the one they really are, as both seem to be vying for control.  This duality of good and evil suggests our own moral choices are quite tenuous, as rather than hard and firm beliefs, our guard could be let down at any moment allowing the greedy, selfish impulses to take over.        

It’s not easy to examine the hypocrisy of human behavior, and to do so in a comedy, but this film does a pretty good job, especially with the introduction of Paul’s younger sister Tammy (Jessica Campbell), who is just discovering her lesbian impulses, though not yet acknowledging that she’s gay.  But when she is rejected, and her former girl friend (Frankie Ingrassia) ever so casually becomes her brother Paul’s girl friend instead (proving she’s not gay), actually taking over the running of his campaign for president, this catapults Tammy into her own candidacy for president.  Unlike the promised sincerity of the other two, however, pledging ways to improve their school, Tammy opens her speech with the remark, “Who cares about this stupid election?”  Tammy offers the refreshing thoughts that reflect how most kids feel, that the only person it really matters to is the winner, as nobody else even cares.  Inexplicably, Tammy is the huge audience favorite at the assembly, where students stand up and cheer, sending the administration into emergency damage control, as her views do not reflect the school’s intended message of civic pride and responsibility.  Tammy is the unsung hero of this film, as she’s the only character in a movie filled with despicable people who actually says what she means.  It’s a joy to watch her spend time in her favorite spot where she goes to be alone, a giant grassy field overlooking a massive power station.  But the movie has more devious intentions, as it’s really about dishonesty, exposing the seamy underside of student council elections, where the election is a stand-in for any human endeavor where we face a choice, a moral dilemma.  The question becomes, just how far would we go, what steps would we take to prevent what we perceive as a horrible outcome?  Would we cross the line of ethical behavior to prevent it from happening?  And simultaneously, how far would we go to get what we want?  Don’t we all have the same conniving Tracy Flick attributes coded into our genetic DNA?  But don’t we just suppress it, as it makes us too uncomfortable to think we’re that deceitful?  In the end, of course, humans are that deceitful all the time, never bothering to think about the casualties of people hurt along the way.