All kings is mostly rapscallions, as fur as I can make out.
– Huckleberry Finn, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Decades after the work of William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, and Mark Twain, the American South remains a repository of great stories — people living off the grid, the decaying grandeur of ramshackle houses, ways of life on the verge of disappearing. In the past five years on the screen alone, audiences have seen Debra Granik’s drama about the methamphetamine racket in the Ozarks, Winter’s Bone, starring Jennifer Lawrence; Benh Zeitlin’s watery parable, Beasts of the Southern Wild, with Quvenzhané Wallis; and now Jeff Nichol‘s fantastic Mud —all independently films made in which a powerful fable has emerged from the poetic detail of a hardscrabble daily existence.
Mud shares an intimacy of texture and mood with Mr. Nichols’ previous films, 2007’s Shotgun Stories and 2011’s ominous Take Shelter; all demonstrate a comprehensive familiarity with the the spiders, snakes, waterside houses and decaying rural terrain of the Arkansas delta. Mud, though has none of these films preoccupation with the adult world of violence and fear. Rather, it is a sweet hearted (but never sappy) coming-of-age tale, following the fourteen year old Ellis (Tye Sheridan), who lives on a houseboat with his separating parents, and his best friend Neckbone (Jacob Lofland), raised in a trailer by a ne’er-do-well uncle (Michael Shannon), as they pilot their boat to an island in the Mississippi. There, they find a boat lodged in a tree by the last flood and inside meet Mud (Matthew McConaughey), a fugitive hiding out, waiting for his white-trash goddess Juniper (Reese Witherspoon) to join him. He’s loved her since childhood in a life spent following her, parting from her, and beating up – and, in the most recent case, killing – the men that treat her badly. Now, the dead man’s family has formed a murderous posse that’s just arrived in town looking for him. The boys, stirred by an adolescent sense of idealism and romance, set out to help him; though it’s clear Mud is something of a con artist, a “born liar” in the words of his own sweetheart, he’s the centre of their secret life – a romantic outlaw who lives by portents and magic, and, especially for Ellis, something of a mentor.
Mr. McConaughey continues his mid-career transformation into a character actor of formidable skill here as Mud – lean and tattooed, with scraggly blond hair and a chipped tooth, he still retains in his rhythmic drawl an inveterate charm as king of the hill on his deserted island. Messrs. Sheridan and Lofland, though, are the stars of this film – they are brilliant as a pair, never for a moment unconvincing as lifelong friends passing into adulthood together. They communicate with few words and gestures, but intuitively understand the other’s actions, and their characters complement each other well; Ellis is perceptive and sensitive, whilst Neckbone is tough, stubborn, and powerfully loyal. The comparisons to Twain’s Huck and Tom Sawyer are obvious, but invited – Mr. Nicholls had his two young thespians study Twain’s work on set, and has here brought to life all of the great man’s deep understanding of adolescent masculinity’s best qualities – loyalty, a thirst for adventure, and a generous, involuntary chivalry. Mr. Nichols, though, is no plagiarist – Ellis’ quest, spurred by his parents impending divorce and his own clumsy first steps towards adult relationships, is to understand what kind of love will last, if there even is such a thing; this theme is incontrovertibly Mr. Nichols’ own.
There is no doubt Mr. Nichols could have told the same story in half the running time (the film clocks in at a leisurely paced 130 minutes), but specific plot is secondary here to the gradual transformation afoot. Taking Mud’s warning that “You gotta watch yourself” as mantra, the film tracks Ellis’ growing self-reliance and disillusionment with the adult world, even as he fast approaches entering it himself. The loose, organic visual style and dialogue employed by Mr. Nichols here complements this measured pacing well; open air footage shot on the river and at the island contrasts against the brief interludes into civilisation, and the novelistic script combines with David Wingo’s subtle score to skilfully ease audiences into the regional vernacular and verbal rhythms of the delta. Mud, in this sense, is a lesson to aspiring film-makers in how to build a world fully steeped in a sense of place without having to resort to picturesque cutaways.
Though the movie is beautifully filmed and formally plotted, turning on a number of symmetries and variations of repeated themes, it holds a rough, country sensibility that is well-complemented by both lead actors and supporting cast – Sam Shephard as a mysterious old man, Sarah Paulson as Ellis’ long-suffering mother, and Ray McKinnon as his hardy, insecure father are all worthy of mention.
Mr. Nichols here confidently expands his ongoing enquiry into the nature of American masculinity, and stamps himself as one of the most talented auteurs currently working in Hollywood. Mud elegantly unfolds from Ellis’ perspective, allowing adult audiences the privilege of calling on their own life experience to foresee certain developments he is too naïve to see coming. This film is a rarity; a bildungsroman that plays out with a psychological and emotional depth usually lost in the transition from page to screen, and one that will surely take its place as one of the warmest and most fundamentally enjoyable films of the year.
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