3/19/14: A Real Simple Man

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auteur theory, beached boat, boat up a tree, broken families, character dramas, cinema, coming of age, David Cronenberg, drama, Ellis, eponymous characters, Film auteurs, film reviews, films, houseboat, Jacob Lofland, Jeff Nichols, Joe Don Baker, love story, man with a secret, Matthew McConaughey, Michael Shannon, Movies, Mud, Neckbone, Paul Sparks, Ray McKinnon, Reese Witherspoon, river, riverboats, romance, Sam Shepard, Sarah Paulson, scrappy kids, small town life, teenagers, townies, Tye Sheridan, writer-director

Fun is fun, when it comes to movies. There’s nothing wrong with mindless action shoot-em-ups or faceless slashers: those are usually more fun than being night watchman in a bubble-wrap factory. Lots of adrenaline, some snappy dialogue and some rousing set pieces…that’s been a sure thing for quite some time. Likewise, mega-budget “event” pictures can be mighty entertaining, in the right doses. Throw a bakers’ dozen of the biggest actors in town into the cinematic equivalent of making your He-Man figures fight your GI Joes? Don’t bother to call: I’m already out in the lobby. That being said, there’s a lot to be said for a good old-fashioned, low-budget, character-driven drama. Sometimes, there’s nothing finer in life than getting a bunch of talented actors together and letting them do what people have been doing since the dawn of time: live. Jeff Nichols’ Mud may not be flashy but it’s a mighty fine coming-of-age film and an intriguing peek into the human condition.

Our film begins on the waterways of Arkansas, as we’re quickly introduced to our young protagonists, Ellis (Tye Sheridan) and Neckbone (Jacob Lofland). They’re a couple of precocious teen boys, best friends and the products of rather fractured homes: Ellis’ mother and father (Sarah Paulson and Ray McKinnon) are at each other’s throats, the harshness of the country and the financial uncertainty of their riverboat existence tearing the family apart, while Neckbone is being raised by his uncle Galen (Michael Shannon) and never knew his parents. One day, while exploring a nearby island, the boys come across a busted-up houseboat, inexplicably beached atop a tree. Boys being boys, they decide to poke around the abandoned boat and discover evidence that it might not be so abandoned: bread, cans of beans and a few nudie magazines. In short order, the lads are introduced to the boat’s current “resident,” a scruffy hobo who calls himself Mud (Matthew McConaughey). According to Mud, he’s waiting for his girlfriend, who he describes to the dubious boys as “long blonde hair, long legs…beautiful…nightingales tattooed on her hands.”

Ellis and Neckbone doubt Mud’s story almost absolutely, right up until the point where they notice that a mysterious young woman (Reece Witherspoon) has just showed up in town, a woman who happens to be blonde and have nightingales tattooed on her hands. She looks an awful lot like Mud’s description, leading the friends to believe that the hobo might be telling the truth, after all. As the trio get friendlier, Mud reveals more and more about his backstory, including the fact that he’s on the run from some pretty bad people. As the boys help Mud get the houseboat up and running and serve as messenger between him and Juniper, they also contact an old friend of his, Tom (Sam Shepard), a mysterious older man who seems to know an awful lot about Mud’s past. As these disparate elements come crashing together, the boys must also maintain their home lives and deal with the conflicting emotions of adolescence: in Ellis’ case, this means falling in love with a high school girl (Bonnie Sturdivant) and navigating the pitfalls of young hormones, while Neckbone must balance his own need to become an independent man with his desire to help his uncle. Everything comes to a head as malevolent forces descend on the small town, intent on making Mud atone for his past as the boys are forced into the first throes of adulthood.

Despite some latter-half action elements that move the film more in the direction of Straw Dogs (minus the rape) than a Boy’s Story, Mud is most certainly a coming-of-age drama. Although the film, ostensibly, is about Mud and his quest for love and redemption, these aspects are always balanced against the larger picture of Ellis and Neckbone growing up. In fact, the more explicitly action-oriented elements (despite being decidedly audience-amping) have an unfortunate tendency to drown out the more mature dramatic aspects that precede them. While it’s certainly rousing to watch McConaughey whup ass righteously, the finale ends up seeming a bit reductive, almost as if the romantic/dramatic elements were a sort of smoke-screen for the more standard action beats. This is doubly unfortunate since, up to that point, Mud as a slow, meditative feel that lends itself more to contemplation than to increased adrenaline.

Acting-wise, the film features an embarrassment of riches, not the least of which is another rock-solid, dependable performance from good ol’ Matthew McC. Sheridan and Lofland are outstanding as the teenage protagonists and there’s never a moment where their friendship feels anything less than genuine. While Sheridan has to do a bit more of the emotional heavy-lifting than Lofland does, owing to Ellis’ slightly more central position in the narrative, neither actor is a slouch: I predict really good things for both of these actors. On the more established, old-guard end, we have excellent turns from Sarah Paulson as Ellis’ mother Mary Lee: she really makes the terrible conflict between what she wants and what her family wants a concrete thing and her interactions with Ray McKinnon frequently have a heartbreaking sense of authenticity. Nichols’ regular Michael Shannon is typically sturdy as Neckbone’s uncle, leading me to reiterate the same thing I always say whenever he’s in a film: get this guy more roles. Joe Don Baker shows up in a small but pivotal role as the grieving father/unrepentant killer and Paul Sparks oozes real menace as his second-in-command.

Writer/director Jeff Nichols has, very quietly, begun to build up quite the impressive resume. His debut, 2007’s Shotgun Stories, was a gut-punch about the special hell that only family members can put each other through and featured a scorching lead turn from Michael Shannon. Nichols followed this up with Take Shelter (2011), another Michael Shannon-starrer, about an average, everyday, Midwest man confronting the dubious possibility that he’s either envisioning the end of the world or is going completely bonkers. Across his three full-length features, Nichols has proven especially adept at examining the ways in which small-town folks are torn asunder by extraordinary circumstances. Some are able to regroup and rebuild…others are completely and utterly washed from the face of the earth. Even though Nichols may not have many films under his belt, he’s revealed himself to be an extraordinary filmmaker with a keen, razor-sharp edge and a knack for upending the stone of Middle American life and examining the squishy bugs beneath. In many ways, Nichols is like a softer-edged, more humanistic version of modern-day Cronenberg: they both plumb the rural interstates and byways of America, looking for the reasons behind the madness. Their America might not look like a Rockwell painting but it’s home, nonetheless.

2/22/14: Doing it For Yourself (Oscar Bait, Part 7)

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1980's, 2013 Academy Awards, 86th Annual Academy Awards, Academy Award Nominee, Academy Award Winner, Academy Awards, AIDs, AZT, based on a true story, Best Actor nominee, Best Actor winner, Best of 2013, Best Supporting Actor nominee, Best Supporting Actor Winner, biographical films, bull-riding, character dramas, cinema, clinical trials, Dallas Buyers Club, drama, film reviews, films, gay community, HIV, homophobia, Jared Leto, Jean-Marc Vallee, Jennifer Garner, Matthew McConaughey, Movies, Rayon, rodeo, Ron Woodroof, Steve Zahn

For all intents and purposes, we like to pretend that the world isn’t as cruel and ruthless as it really is. We’d like to think that no one truly falls through the cracks, that there’s always some sort of safety net out there if people are just willing to look. It may not be the most ideal support, we’d like to think, and people may not be able to live in the exact manner of their choosing but beggars can’t be choosers, we reason. At the very least, we’ve always thought, truly sick people should be able to have access to medicine: no one should just be allowed to sicken and die, particularly if there’s something that can be done about it. Right? If we’re being dead serious with ourselves, however, we don’t believe that anymore than we believe in unicorns or the Bermuda Triangle.

In reality, vast expanses of the populace, of every populace since the beginning of time, have been marginalized, pushed to the fringes and forced to rely only on themselves for their well-being. These populaces vary from society to society, country to country, culture to culture and state to state but they’re always painful reminders of one cold, simple fact: whenever anyone needlessly dies, equality is nothing more than a feel-good bedtime story. Anytime an individual is brushed off by the established order and left, essentially, to die, we see the failure of the status quo. In these situations, it becomes necessary for brave individuals (or groups) to fight for their own rights, health and well-being. This need to fight doesn’t necessarily reflect society at its best but it sure does make for some riveting cinema and Dallas Buyers Club is gripping from start to finish.

Based on a true story, Dallas Buyers Club wastes no time in introducing us to our protagonist, rodeo bull-rider and general gadfly Ron Woodroof (Matthew McConaughey). Ron’s the kind of guy who likes to live life to the fullest: threesomes behind the scenes of a bustling rodeo, conning his fellow riders and getting his ass beat in the process, hovering up cocaine by the yard, saying the first thing that comes to his mind. There’s absolutely nothing altruistic about our “hero”: within very short order, we’ve determined that he’s a virulently homophobic, crooked man-child who couldn’t give two shits about anyone else in the world. He’s the kind of good ‘ol boy who sneers when it’s revealed that Rock Hudson is homosexual and dismisses HIV and AIDS as a “gay disease.” He’s also the guy who ends up with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, thanks to his numerous, unprotected sexual escapades.

Doctors give Ron just thirty days to live but he’s a stubborn cuss and won’t go softly into that good night: “Fuck your 30 days, motherfuckers: ain’t nothing can kill Ron Woodroof in 30 days!” Ron celebrates his “ridiculous” diagnosis by immediately rushing out and having a coke-fueled orgy with his best friend Tucker (Steve Zahn) and a couple “lucky” ladies. Once the seriousness of his situation finally settles in, however, along with the realization that all of his friends and associates have abandoned him, Ron must get to the very serious business of staying alive. Drug trials offer scant hope: kindly doctor Eve (Jennifer Garner) can’t guarantee that Ron will actually get the AZT rather than the placebo. Time and time again, Ron is faced with the terrifying notion that no one really feels they can cure him: everyone seems to be waiting for Ron to die so they can study him.

A chance meeting with an AIDS-infected transexual named Rayon (Jared Leto) sets into motion a chain of events that sees Ron go around the world to pick up experimental, “unauthorized” HIV/AIDS drugs and distribute them to patients through a club of sorts” the Dallas Buyers Club. In short order, Ron and Rayon’s club is doing boomer business and Ron’s health seems to be improving. Dark clouds appear on the horizon, however, when the DEA, IRS and AMA all get wind of what’s going on. Will the Feds work to shut down the only thing that seems to be keeping Ron and Rayon alive? Is Ron an opportunistic con-man or a saint in redneck clothing? If Ron gets shut down, what will become of the rest of the Dallas Buyers Club?

By the time I saw Dallas Buyers Club. I had already seen a handful of other Best Picture nominees for 2013: American Hustle, 12 Years a Slave and Captain Phillips. Of these four films, Dallas Buyers Club was easily my favorite and, in fact, probably one of the best films I’d seen in quite some time.  There’s an awful lot to love in Dallas Buyers Club: the film looks great and has a gritty, earnest eye for period detail; the script is razor-sharp, full of sharply delineated characters and plenty of juicy dialogue (especially some of Ron’s bon mots); the ensemble casts fits together like a jigsaw piece, each actor (both major and minor) working together to paint a complete picture; the film has a big, epic scope yet still brings everything down to a personal, relatable  level; the film is deeply emotional and powerful, yet never maudlin, obvious or hysterical. It’s a beautifully made, powerful work of art that hits on a number of levels yet never loses the inherent dignity and passion of its characters. And then, of course, there are those towering performances by McConaughey and Leto.

Even before he was given the Best Actor statue at the Academy Awards, I already knew that McConaughey had earned it. His performance as Ron Woodroof is nothing short of a revelation: angry, charming, obnoxious, feral, frightened…Woodroof is an open-nerve, the unbearably loud voice of the disenfranchised screaming at maximum volume. There’s absolutely nothing about McConaughey’s performance that ever feels like acting or, to be honest, anything less than completely authentic. At times, it’s impossible to watch, since the pain radiates from the screen in waves. At other times, it’s impossible not to watch, since McConaughey seems to attract all matter and attention to him in the same matter that a black hole might. Ron Woodroof is an amazingly conflicted character and McConaughey brings him to life in all his multi-faceted glory. Bruce Dern was amazing in Nebraska and Chiwetel Ejiofor was heartbreaking in 12 Years a Slave but, for my money, McConaughey gave the single best performance of the year, hands-down.

Leto’s performance as Rayon, although not as multi-faceted as McConaughey’s take on Woodroof, is a pretty spectacular piece of craft. Leto becomes the character so completely that, just as with McConaughey’s performance, I bought it all absolutely. Despite how good Leto was, however, there were still several moments that felt too “actorly” and performed, moments that were more wholly-integrated in McConaughey’s performance. I chalk this up to one fact, plain and simple: Leto just isn’t the actor that McConaughey is, at least not yet. It’s impossible for me not to feel, at least in some small way, that Barkhad Abdi (Captain Phillips) ultimately deserved the trophy more than Leto. While Leto gave a humble, nuanced and tender performance, it still felt like a performance: Abdi, on the other hand, never felt anything less than completely authentic, even if his role didn’t have the emotional beats and arc of Leto’s. Nonetheless, Leto’s performance is extraordinary and, in any other Oscar year, would have been my pick, as well.

In many ways, Dallas Buyers Club strikes me as the anti-American Hustle. Both films are period-pieces about the disintegration of the American dream and both feature characters who must pull off elaborate hustles in order to survive. While American Hustle strikes me as weightless and inconsequential, however, Dallas Buyers Club reminds me more of films like Boogie Nights and Goodfellas. There are certain films that just impact me more than other films and Dallas Buyers Club was one of those films: by the time the end credits rolled, the film felt like a masterpiece and something deserving of the term “classic.” When American Hustle was over, however, I only found myself entertained: truth be told, I’d already forgotten about several key moments days after first watching it. Dallas Buyers Club, however, stuck with me for days and I can still it so clearly that I might as well have watched it days ago, not weeks ago.

Despite being a film about the terrible ravages of AIDS, Dallas Buyers Club is a fiercely vibrant, alive, angry film. There is nothing melancholy or morose about this: like Ron Woodroof, Dallas Buyers Club isn’t interested in feel-good sentiments or gauzy hand-holding. There’s nothing stereotypically “heroic” about Woodroof: he’s a selfish jerk and he knows it. He also, however, refuses to give up, refuses to lie down just because the odds aren’t good. He refuses to listen to “experts” who’ve written him off, friends who’ve turned their back on him and a society that looks down on him. Ultimately, Ron Woodroof couldn’t give two shits whether you like him or not: he’s not asking society’s permission to live. Ultimately, Ron (and Dallas Buyers Club) stand as towering testimony that the spark of life can never be truly extinguished as long as the will to survive is strong. Dallas Buyers Club was a profoundly moving experience and was, without a doubt, one of the very best films of 2013.