Mud

Possession is 9/10 of the Law
or
Lookin' for Love in All the Wrong Places

The last film that Jeff Nichols wrote and directed was the very interesting, very odd, and quite layered Take Shelter.  His latest Mud is part coming-of-age movie, part Southern Gothic, part classic romance and part tragedy and complete curiosity.  It features a couple of great kid performances and a top-tier cast supporting them.

Tye Sheridan and Jacob Lofland play two tweeners living on the Mississippi River.  They're a couple of restless kids who hired help in their families, but with minimal supervision, have the freedom to sneak out at night exploring.  On one of those pre-dawn excursions they motor over to an island and find a wonder—a boat nestled in a tree.  Checking it out, they're in for a shock.  Someone's living there.  

That someone is Mud (Matthew McConaughey) who is eking out an existence there.  How he got there is a mystery.  Why he's there is not.  He's killed a man, who was messing with the girl he loves, and that man has a powerful family (led by Joe Don Baker).  He's hiding out, waiting for word from Juniper (Reese Witherspoon), and when he hears, they'll run off together, where...well, that's a little unspecific.  In the meantime, he uses the little go-betweeners to get food, supplies, and word out, that includes to one of Ellis' (Sheridan) neighbors, a solitary man named Tom Blankenship (Sam Shepard), who Mud labels "an assassin." Blankenship calls Mud a liar, making Ellis slightly conflicted; he's willing to do anything for Mud in his quixotic quest, out of a young man's puppy-love instincts, in part a response to the fracturing marriage of his parents (Ray McKinnon, Sarah Paulson) and his own interactions with "townie" girls, particularly May Pearl (Bonnie Sturdivant).

It's to Ellis' advantage that he and "Neckbone" (Lofland) are under the radar of everybody's notice, his parents have other concerns and Neckbone's uncle (Michael Shannon) is in his own little world, so the two boys go back and forth between mainland and island with messages and supplies, which becomes increasingly complex when Mud decides he's going to get that boat out of the tree.  And Ellis in his come-to-the-rescue way to interfere when one of the goons keeping an eye on Juniper gets aggressive with her trying to get information about Mud's whereabouts.

Things begin to spiral out of control to a conclusion that can't come to any good, despite everyone's best and worst intentions, due to the breaking of borders between the insular natures of the players.

But, there's something else going on here that creeps like an adder through the Louisiana swamp, something to do with misogyny.  Maybe it's just the timing of events—no accidental as it's all in the control of the writer-director—but all the problems seem to generate from the war between men and women.  The women here—Juniper, Ellis' mom, May Pearl—have an edge of capriciousness and undependability (in the males' eyes, anyway) that derails their plans and dreams.  The men are hardly blameless, going through their lives with their eyes wide shut, totally aware that the women in their lives may prove disastrous in the short term, quixotically playing the hero or the rescuer, anyway.  Everybody has some romantic view of life that is not theirs, and their pursuit of it proves their undoing.  One leaves the theater with the sense of a good story well told, but with a stake through the heart in the futility of good intentions.  One wants the waters of life to be smooth and transparent, but the reality of it is that it's the consistency of the movie's title.

Mud is a Matinee.

Take Shelter

Riders on the Storm
or
"Take Care of Your Family.  Handle Your Business."

The Laforches, Curtis (Michael Shannon) and Sam (Jessica Chastain) are re-united in the evening—he from his construction job, she from her consignment cottage-business and taking care of their daughter Hanna.  They hold each other in the doorway of their daughter's room, as the child sleeps soundly.  And even though their daughter is deaf, they still speak in hushed tones.  "I still take my boots off before I come in the house," he says, wondering at the extra precaution.

"I still whisper," she murmurs, smilingly, in reply.

It's a lovely little scene in a resolutely controlled horror film.*  But, it's emblematic of the themes of Take Shelter as a whole.  Curtis and Sam are made for each other, protecting their family, even unnecessarily.  They just approach it from different ways.  "You've got a good life, Curtis," says his friend and co-worker, Dewart (Shea Whigham).  "That's the best compliment. Look at a man's life and say that he's doing everything right."

Yep.  But that good life is about to be tested.  And woe to the prophet who sees things no one else can, be they Moses, Jor-El, Melanie Daniels, Roy Neary, or Dr. Miles J. Bennell.  Despite their special knowledge, they are, at best, ignored, and, at worst, (well, aside from their planet blowing up), shunned and reviled...from those who do not see and are deaf to his warnings.  Nobody likes a party-pooper, however good their intentions.  And that "special knowledge" will test the best of marriages and relationships.** Especially when it comes to family.  He's doing crazy stuff to protect them, and she's wondering if he's crazy and should get out of the situation...to also protect them.  The goals are the same, but coming from opposite points of view.  The potential for a train-wreck is dire.

But "dire" is exactly what Curtis is worried about.  His region of Ohio is being pelted by severe thunderstorms and even when the rains cease, the cloud don't part but roil in the background heaving shafts of lightning to the fields below.

Then, there are the dreams that involve those closest to him attacking him, leaving him gasping in panic attacks, costing him sleep...and perspective.  The dream-scapes become more and more...uh, nightmarish as torrential rains obscure vision, townies become zombie-like predators and the laws of Nature are supplanted by cheap courtroom theatrics, birds, reflecting the odd flying patterns seen in his real life, rush in a fevered frenzy and begin dropping out of the sky, dead.  The rain becomes oily, then God knows what will happen.

But only God.  Curtis' visions doesn't extend that far.

Of course, he could merely be going crazy, like his wife and neighbors think, especially when he spends a lot of money and risks his job to expand the storm shelter out back.  And, then, there's his family history—his mother (Kathy Baker) was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia when she was Curtis' age.  Maybe pills will stop the oncoming onslaught if it is only in his mind. 


But what if it doesn't? 


Take Shelter is discomfiting, just as Hitchcock's The Birds is.  No explanation is made and one is kept guessing throughout.  And writer-director Jeff Nichols (Shotgun Stories) manages to, again, take a simple idea, and expand it to feature length, keeping the film centered on human drama rather than ignoring the potential of the story with empty spectacle.  Shannon delivers a dangerously controlled performance that only snaps into a rant at one particularly inappropriate moment.  And Jessica Chastain continues her roll of extraordinary movie-choices and making her parts uniquely her own, not unlike her co-star from The Help, Sissy Spacek.  All in all, an interesting exercise in dread.

Take Shelter is a Matinee.

* I use the term advisedly, as Take Shelter is an "Environmental Horror" film, in the same genus as Hitchcock's The Birds, or M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening.  There are no slashings, and hardly any blood is spilled, but it does mess with your head and keep you guessing.  Oh, yes it does.

** Think of the Nativity, and the conversation that ensued when Mary told Joseph "I'm pregnant and God did it.  Oh...and Merry Christmas."