November 7, 2009
"Let me see your knife. Can I carve my name in your face?"
David Gordon Green's Undertow tells a story "based on true events that was all a lie," as he describes it. While many people have been quick to draw comparison's to Charles Laughton's classic Night of th...( read more)e Hunter, Undertow is actually based on a 911 call from a frantic young man telling the operator some crazy stories that may or may not have been true. The film takes the stories as truth, but not without shrouding certain aspects of it in ambiguity. As with all Green's films, clear, concise narrative takes a back-seat to atmosphere and a strong emotional landscape that tells a bigger story than the one written in the plot descriptions.
Green's third film opens with a sequence that's at once visceral and baffling. Deep in the rural American South, Chris Munn (Jamie Bell), a sullen teenager with a mean twist to his mouth, throws a rock through the house of this girl, Lila (Kristen Stewart), he's been seeing. When her father emerges with a shotgun, he flees, taking refuge at a work shed where he leaps blindly onto a board with a nail jutting out of it. As he continues to run, shocked with pain, the board now affixed to the bottom of his foot, the filmmaker keeps freezing the frame - a stylistic tic that suggests there's more to what we're seeing than meets the eye. The same can be said of Undertow.
Green, it turns out, has made an art film posing as a backwoods gothic thriller. (Or is it the other way around?) The troublesome, but good-hearted Chris returns to the tumbledown home he shares with his little brother Tim (Devon Alan), a sickly dreamer who has a secret obsession with sipping paint and other stuff (hence his chronic intestinal trouble), and the pair's bedraggled father, John (Dermot Mulroney), a hog farmer and taxidermist who gruffly looks after the two boys after his wife's death.
The setting, and indeed the whole sinister hick-trash, Southern vibe of the place, suggests Faulkner by way of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and the floating ominousness is soon upped with the arrival of Deel (Josh Lucas), the boys' uncle, a grinning ex-con who comes on all friendly but is clearly up to no good. In the attempt of not disclosing much, let's just say bad stuff happens and the two brothers run away from home, taking with them a dark family secret in the form of mysterious gold coins. From there, they meet many Southern locals, some hospitable, some mysterious. Uncle Deel - Green's most menacing character yet - spends days searching for them.
DGG continues to set himself apart from other filmmakers of his generation, opting for sincerity over irony and soulfulness over cynicism. Here, though, Green makes his first attempt at action and chases. Using freeze-frames, negative colour, Tim Orr's (his one and only DP) gritty cinematography and a restrained, yet comical score from Phillip Glass, he evokes '70s drive-in films as well as sun-drenched gothic thrillers. With an assured command over the medium that evokes Malick as well as Altman (two of his main influences), Green re-re-establishes himself as an indisputable filmmaking talent and the best of his generation.
Because he also encourages his actors to improvise, Green's films achieve an uncommon naturalism within their poetic undertones. A character can segue into a discussion about how he once saw a flock of birds kill themselves by flying straight into a house, or in this case a monologue about chigger bugs and it will sound completely conversational, even though it carries much weight. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Green does not use dialogue to call attention to his own prose, but to call attention to how his characters feel.
Once again, he gets the best out of his actors. Jamie Bell, that English kid who played Billy Elliot, fits Green's directorial style perfectly. Brooding, vulnerable and fuelled by anger without succumbing to its worst temptations, he makes Chris Munn into a character one would study in a classic piece of literature. Devon Alan gives a wonderful performance as the fragile, young Tim. Unlike many of Hollywood's young stars of his generation, Alan does not give the impression he's acting, but actually communicating. As Uncle Deel, Josh Lucas teeters on the brink of going way over the top, but reels it in just in time. Dermot Mulroney is fine too, and very well casted.
Green's first three films all take place in the South, but none of them reduces its characters to Southern archetypes. In George Washington, the African-American characters never face any racism or bigotry from the white characters, a trait that some viewers criticized. Here, the supporting characters blend seamlessly into the rusty, mud-soaked landscape as both character and scenery without forcing negative, dumb-as-a-brick connotations to the tapestry. Nature plays a big part in the narrative and Green knows how to have his characters and setting coexist peacefully even when enduring family tragedy, heartbreak and violence.
I remember when I saw All the Real Girls for the first time and not being able to get out of my seat once the film ended. That film had a profound effect on me as a viewer, as a lover of cinema and as a human being who has had his share of love and heartbreak. Undertow did not have the same effect, nor did I expect it to. It's not a love story, but a story that depicts brotherly love in the face of violence. Either way, love tends to be part of it. It remains amazing to me that a director this young can convey these themes with uncommon authenticity, style and wisdom. Green knows a thing or two about telling the truth. And about making great films.
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