Undertow
Director David Gordon Green, whose films include the critically acclaimed George Washington and All the Real Girls, is known as a filmmaker whose eschews traditional plot devices to focus on a film’s overall tone and visual impact. Mr. Green brings this talent, along with an actual plot, to his latest small film, Undertow. The story focuses on the relationships between two sets of brothers, John and Deel Munn and John’s sons, Chris and Tim. Told through the eyes of the patriarch of the clan, the films opens on what seems to be the rural south in the 1970s. John (Dermot Mulroney) has taken his kids and retreated to the woods after the death of his wife to live a quiet, peaceful existence. This is easier than it sounds since John’s eldest son Chris (Jamie Bell) is constantly getting into trouble with the law, and John’s youngest son Tim (Devon Alan) is suffering from a strange malady that compels him to eat inedible things, such as paint and mud, instead of food. Into this quietly brewing tempest stumbles Deel (Josh Lucas), John’s brother whose release from prison seems quite suspect. He’s after a set of gold coins the senior Munn had left his boys, and the lengths to which he’ll go to get them ultimately tears the family apart.
Part Southern gothic tale, part thriller, and part coming of age story, Mr. Green has many focuses in the film and doesn’t care to settle for the conventions of any of them. It’s a viewpoint that makes his films both incredibly good and incredibly frustrating. When people talk about how things always occur in certain ways in movies that would never happen in those ways in reality, they need to be shown one of Mr. Green’s films. The details of the film, from set design, to cinematography, to music, work perfectly together to evoke a feeling of ennui and excitement simultaneously. But watching Mr. Green’s films can be like watching paint dry. The adventures the boys share and the characters introduced to them seem irrelevant, taking away from the main plot. But the film takes pride in the showing us that life is, in fact, a series of events that can either be small and ordinary or big and extraordinary. Maybe there are parts of our daily lives that may seem boring or uninteresting to others, but does that mean they should not be shared?
The four principal actors, on whose performances the film rests, are uniformly good. Mr. Bell, a long way from his breakout role in Billy Elliot, not only masters a Southern accent quite well, he also manages to keep his character compelling in situations that might not seem so. The young actor who plays Tim, Devon Alan, is one of those rare finds—a child actor who never looks like he’s acting. For his age and the demands placed upon him in the role, he is quite spectacular. Mr. Lucas and Mr. Mulroney, each of whom seem to prefer juicy roles in smaller films punctuated by less demanding ones in larger ones, are right at home in the world Mr. Green has created. Mr. Lucas gets the flashier part as the bad seed, but the quiet intensity Mr. Mulroney brings to his roles makes the men evenly matched.
Overall, Undertow manages to be a compelling look at ordinary people caught up in situations great and small, and it does not make the viewer choose which is more important. At times trying, the film is at least honest in the way it portrays the predicaments of its characters. One’s enjoyment of the film will be tempered by whether or not they share Mr. Green’s cinematic sensibilities. While the film drags in spots, it is recommended viewing nonetheless.
Submitted 9 November 04. Posted 22 December 04.
