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Mud (2013)
Matthew McConaughey, Tye Sheridan, Jacob Lofland, Reese Witherspoon. Directed by Jeff Nichols.
It’s easy to get annoyed with Matthew McConaughey. All that running around shirtless and a few bad films can make you forget how good he was in some of his early movies, such as Contact and A Time to Kill. I didn’t see last year’s Magic Mike or Killer Joe, for which he got a lot of positive attention, but I did recently see him in Bernie and would have loved his performance if he didn’t stick out like a movie star among a bunch of regular people.
Mud is a movie to make you forget all that shirtlessness (‘though to be fair, he does take his shirt off at least once in this movie, too), a performance that they will play clips of at the Academy Awards ceremony during the In Memoriam segment the year he dies. It is such a strong, memorable, compelling performance that even at film’s end, he seems to be revealing more about his character as a person and himself as an actor. I can’t vouch for the accuracy of the regional accent McConaughey uses, but it flows out of his mouth so beautifully and with such injury that it feels strangely seductive.
McConaughey plays Mud, a fugitive from the law, hiding on an island in a river delta in Arkansas. Two teenaged boys named Ellis and Neckbone (Tye Sheridan and Jacob Lofland) befriend him, at first agreeing to bring him food and then to take letters to the woman he’s loved since high school. At the same time, all the usual fifteen-year-old stuff is going on in Ellis’s life, and Mud becomes something of a emblem for him. Ellis sees in Mud something of a romantic ideal when it seems that all around him are the cynical realities.
There is something heartbreaking and sweet about the way Ellis moves through this movie, at times stepping cautiously into manhood, at times leaping rashly. And while the social structure of his life shifts beneath him unpredictably, like the floor of the houseboat he lives on, there is always his best friend Neckbone, steady and reliable, the way we remember our own best friends at that age.
I have written before about how Reese Witherspoon seems to play every role as if she’s in an Oscar-winning movie, and for the first time in a while, the material seems to keep up with her in this film. This is not her movie, but she inhabits the part of it that’s hers like it’s her last shot to show what she can do. She is beautiful and tragic and kind of elegant even with bruises on her face and a cigarette in her mouth. This is one of my favorite performances from her.
There is almost nothing new about the story itself, but it is told well, and it is a coming-of-age story that leaves some room for idealism, unlike so many that tilt in the direction of cynicism. For all its nostalgia, Stand by Me is something of a downer of a coming-of-age tale, while Mud, with all its muddy, mucky lack of nostalgia, manages somehow to make you feel good, a hard-earned payoff that I did not see coming.
8/10 (IMDb rating)
82/100 (Criticker rating)
Matthew McConaughey, Tye Sheridan, Jacob Lofland, Reese Witherspoon. Directed by Jeff Nichols.
It’s easy to get annoyed with Matthew McConaughey. All that running around shirtless and a few bad films can make you forget how good he was in some of his early movies, such as Contact and A Time to Kill. I didn’t see last year’s Magic Mike or Killer Joe, for which he got a lot of positive attention, but I did recently see him in Bernie and would have loved his performance if he didn’t stick out like a movie star among a bunch of regular people.
Mud is a movie to make you forget all that shirtlessness (‘though to be fair, he does take his shirt off at least once in this movie, too), a performance that they will play clips of at the Academy Awards ceremony during the In Memoriam segment the year he dies. It is such a strong, memorable, compelling performance that even at film’s end, he seems to be revealing more about his character as a person and himself as an actor. I can’t vouch for the accuracy of the regional accent McConaughey uses, but it flows out of his mouth so beautifully and with such injury that it feels strangely seductive.
McConaughey plays Mud, a fugitive from the law, hiding on an island in a river delta in Arkansas. Two teenaged boys named Ellis and Neckbone (Tye Sheridan and Jacob Lofland) befriend him, at first agreeing to bring him food and then to take letters to the woman he’s loved since high school. At the same time, all the usual fifteen-year-old stuff is going on in Ellis’s life, and Mud becomes something of a emblem for him. Ellis sees in Mud something of a romantic ideal when it seems that all around him are the cynical realities.
There is something heartbreaking and sweet about the way Ellis moves through this movie, at times stepping cautiously into manhood, at times leaping rashly. And while the social structure of his life shifts beneath him unpredictably, like the floor of the houseboat he lives on, there is always his best friend Neckbone, steady and reliable, the way we remember our own best friends at that age.
I have written before about how Reese Witherspoon seems to play every role as if she’s in an Oscar-winning movie, and for the first time in a while, the material seems to keep up with her in this film. This is not her movie, but she inhabits the part of it that’s hers like it’s her last shot to show what she can do. She is beautiful and tragic and kind of elegant even with bruises on her face and a cigarette in her mouth. This is one of my favorite performances from her.
There is almost nothing new about the story itself, but it is told well, and it is a coming-of-age story that leaves some room for idealism, unlike so many that tilt in the direction of cynicism. For all its nostalgia, Stand by Me is something of a downer of a coming-of-age tale, while Mud, with all its muddy, mucky lack of nostalgia, manages somehow to make you feel good, a hard-earned payoff that I did not see coming.
8/10 (IMDb rating)
82/100 (Criticker rating)