Mud (2013)
Directed by Jeff Nichols
Two teenage boys find a fugitive hiding out on an island in the Mississippi River and help him reunite with his lover and escape an avenging family and their armed posse.
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The young heroes in “Mud” recall the sentiment of the teenage rebels in Rob Reiner’s “Stand by Me” – they are at that stage of adolescence in which their future will forever be shaped by the experiences of that moment, and the adults around them dictate it with situations of impending emotional gravity.
The teenagers' thrill and adventure in secretly aiding Mud gives the film a Huckleberry Finn-ish flavour that blends with something akin to Rob Reiner's 1986 classic Stand By Me and Charles Laughton's The Night of the Hunter .
It's a stirring ode to innocence that evokes classics like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Stand By Me.
Their adventure brings to mind Stand By Me with a touch of Mark Twain, and Nichols' lingering shots of the natural world are comparable with the work of film-maker Terrence Malick.
This is a junior adventure story echoing Huckleberry Finn and Stand by Me, a tale which is in no hurry to unfold, but beautifully done, exquisitely performed, and filled with terror and wonder.
But Mud has a rare big-screen beauty, and its old-fashioned storytelling recalls A River Runs Through It , Night of the Hunter , Stand By Me , and Huckleberry Finn .
It's a child-on-the-way-to-becoming-an-adult story that recalls such classics as "To Kill a Mockingbird" and "Shane" (including a nod to the boy's cries of "Sha-a-a-ne"), and I do not throw around those titles loosely.
Echoing The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn , but also evoking the predatory menace of The Night of the Hunter and other books and films ( To Kill a Mockingbird comes to mind) where children become immersed in an adult and dangerous world, Mud finds Matthew McConaughey at the top of his game.
Originality is pretty much a no-show, as I kept clicking off movies in my head like “Shane,” “Stand by Me,” “Sling Blade,” “To Kill a Mockingbird,” “The Beasts of the Southern Wild,” “A Perfect World” … Even the outstanding work by Matthew McConaughey, playing a scraggly good ol’ boy with love on his mind and the law on his tail, seemed much too familiar.
"Mud" runs deep with undercurrents from American movies and literature: " Tom Sawyer ," "Huckleberry Finn," " The Night of the Hunter ," " To Kill a Mockingbird ," "Moby Dick," " Cool Hand Luke ," the films of Nichols' fellow Austin-resident Terrence Malick (" Badlands ," " Days of Heaven ," " The Tree of Life ").
Families can talk about the similarities between Mud and other stories about kids who befriend enigmatic older characters, like Huckleberry Finn or To Kill a Mockingbird .
There’s a sort of familial relationship between “Mud” and David Gordon Green’s sadly underappreciated “Undertow,” though Nichols’ film is far less dark and forbidding—in fact, despite the seriousness of many of its themes, there’s an overall sense of lightness to it.
There's a whole lot of early David Gordon Green in the film's slow-moving, minor-key exploration of place: Nichols and cinematographer Adam Stone do a better job than any filmmakers have since at least Green's own Undertow in using the sticky, sunblasted and plant-filled landscapes of the American South as a visual expression of character, and the absolutely gorgeous exterior cinematography crafts a romantic overlay for battered, impoverished settings that exactly matches Ellis's own half-awareness of the shortcomings of the adult worldview he's trying to adopt.
And while the film doesn't have the lighthearted swashbuckling tone of some of those kid favorites – indeed the ultimate effect cleaves much closer to the Ozarks noir of Winter's Bone or David Gordon Green's sublime Undertow – it still had a similar odor as the adventure section of the library.
After the impressive Take Shelter, writer-director Jeff Nichols takes on the sort of swampy southern gothic that David Gordon Green handled so masterfully in Undertow (2004).
The teenagers' thrill and adventure in secretly aiding Mud gives the film a Huckleberry Finn-ish flavour that blends with something akin to Rob Reiner's 1986 classic Stand By Me and Charles Laughton's The Night of the Hunter .
Its closest relatives are Charles Laughton's The Night of the Hunter and Elia Kazan's Wild River , but shot through with the “gritty” vision of cruddy home life and bayou listlessness of Lance Hammer's Ballast .
One part "The Night of the Hunter," two parts "Huckleberry Finn," "Mud" may be born of the same rustic sensibility that fueled everyone from Andrew Wyeth to Terrence Malick, but Nichols expresses this outlook in a decidedly personal way.
Echoing The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn , but also evoking the predatory menace of The Night of the Hunter and other books and films ( To Kill a Mockingbird comes to mind) where children become immersed in an adult and dangerous world, Mud finds Matthew McConaughey at the top of his game.
"Mud" runs deep with undercurrents from American movies and literature: " Tom Sawyer ," "Huckleberry Finn," " The Night of the Hunter ," " To Kill a Mockingbird ," "Moby Dick," " Cool Hand Luke ," the films of Nichols' fellow Austin-resident Terrence Malick (" Badlands ," " Days of Heaven ," " The Tree of Life ").
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For such an American film, there are also clear echoes of British classics such as Great Expectations and Whistle Down the Wind .
Mud clearly sets out from frame one to run along well-worn tracks – it’s like Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn meets Whistle down the Wind (1961).
Mud is something of an update of the 1961 British film Whistle Down the Wind (directed by Bryan Forbes from a 1959 novel by Mary Hayley Bell) where three children mistake a hidden fugitive for Jesus Christ.
As a reference, Mud will fit quite nicely into your movie collection alongside Billy Bob Thornton ’s One False Move and Sling Blade, and equally well next to adaptations of Tennessee Williams or Samuel Clemens (aka Mark Twain), including The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
American icon Sam Shepard , another Malick veteran, appears as a houseboat hermit sporting Billy Bob Thornton 's haircut from " Sling Blade ."
Originality is pretty much a no-show, as I kept clicking off movies in my head like “Shane,” “Stand by Me,” “Sling Blade,” “To Kill a Mockingbird,” “The Beasts of the Southern Wild,” “A Perfect World” … Even the outstanding work by Matthew McConaughey, playing a scraggly good ol’ boy with love on his mind and the law on his tail, seemed much too familiar.
Nothing, of course, turns out as it should or as we quite expect, and there is a sudden, spectacularly handled outburst of violence worthy of Sam Peckinpah, whose first important movie, Ride the High Country , dealt with similar themes of coming of age, moral growth, ethical tutelage and a climactic confrontation between men of honour and representatives of brute force.
The location’s tight connection to the story recalls John Sayles films like Limbo—the story could not be transplanted to a different setting and achieve the same result.
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As a reference, Mud will fit quite nicely into your movie collection alongside Billy Bob Thornton ’s One False Move and Sling Blade, and equally well next to adaptations of Tennessee Williams or Samuel Clemens (aka Mark Twain), including The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
Its closest relatives are Charles Laughton's The Night of the Hunter and Elia Kazan's Wild River , but shot through with the “gritty” vision of cruddy home life and bayou listlessness of Lance Hammer's Ballast .
The family home, like those in Elia Kazan's "Wild River," is threatened by demolition; it's smack on the banks of an unpredictable waterway.