Undertow

 

 

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This was one on my `should have seen sooner list', it is a film from 2004 and is the third effort from director (and co-writer) David Gordon Green and received a very mixed response from critics on release.

It is about two brothers, Chris Munn (Jamie Bell) and Tim (Devon Allan), his younger sibling. They live in the back arse of nowhere in rural Georgia. Their father John (Dermot Mulroney) keeps them away from school and they seem to live a sort of subsistence life, which due to lack of social interaction has left them all a tad dysfunctional. Whilst Chris finds encounters with the local law officials a way of tempering his isolation, the younger Tim seems to withdraw further into a life that predicates the future solely in reference to the little past he can remember.

Then one day a big surprise as a car rolls up the dust road bringing a relative the boys did not know about. It is Deel (Josh Lucas), their errant Uncle, who has just been released from prison. After a tenuous reunion, it soon becomes apparent that Deel isn't really into the welfare of his brothers' family but more into the inheritance that he thinks he has been swindled out of.

This leads to the inevitable confrontation that sees Chris and Tim go on the run. It is at this point that similarities to the absolute classic `Night of the Hunter' are made. That is a misleading comparison as it is only related to in the way the plot develops.

This though, is a well made and observed film, the acting is all excellent especially so for Jamie Bell and Devon Allan who both received Young Artist Awards for their performances. It is a slow, builder of a film that is shot in a dream like way that belies some of the violence and double play. It is visually arresting, but not in a beautiful way but he manages to see art shots in everyday clutter and detritus. The boys are almost always dirty and seemingly dressed in rags, yet this is still cinematically engaging.

A deeply moving and well observed film that deserves praise in its own right, but it broods on the psychology rather than the action, but it held my attention and for me it really worked.

Undertow is an exceedingly odd movie, yet it is its very oddness that makes it compelling. If nothing else, it makes the film memorable - and I don't think it would have been otherwise. I don't know where this is supposed to be set in the South, but it looks like the film had someone in charge of nothing else but finding the most depressing locations of squalor out there. Poverty apparently causes brain damage, judging by this film, because there is not one truly sane person to be found in the cast of characters. At its heart, I suppose Undertow is basically a human story, but it comes down to a tale of two pairs of brothers. Chris (Jamie Bell) and the younger Tim (Devon Alan) live with their pa John Munn (Dermot Mulroney) out in the middle of nowhere, a human pig sty out in the sticks somewhere. After the death of his wife, John took his sons and basically retreated from the whole world. Chris is always getting into trouble, and we first meet him running from some little hick girl's daddy and suffering a most painful injury sure to make you wince. You immediately say to your self that this kid just ain't right - and then you meet the family. It's hard to read the father; he's tough on Chris, easy on Tim, but hardly supportive in his paternal role. Tim has some health problems - although they would seem to be mental, as the boy has a tendency to eat any nasty substance he gets his hands on. Your all-American family, this is not.

Things are at least bearable - until John's jailbird brother shows up unexpectedly. Even before we learn about the issues John and Deel had in their past, it's easy to see that ol' Deel is up to no good. There's something in that run-down house that he wants, and the Munns' already unhappy home comes crashing down completely, leaving Chris and Tim on the run. The second half of the film follows the two brothers as they try to survive on their own, and survival basically means they have to keep running. Now we see even more pitiful scenes of human discomfort - some rather heart-breaking, some disturbing, and some just incredibly weird.

With such strange characters, there's some interesting dialogue interspersed throughout the film. I have no idea what the crazy mechanic kept running on about, the only truly nice people the young brothers meet up with are borderline loonies, and Tim himself delivers a whole Shakespearian-length monologue about chiggers. I wondered what kind of resolution this movie would bring to bear in the end (actually, I wondered if it would even try to resolve anything at all) - it's not entirely effective, but there is an actual ending. It's the contrast between the two sets of brothers (although one could bring a semantic argument into the definition of brother here) that stands out as a possibility for whatever the movie was supposedly about. I'm not sure I can even classify Undertow, however - I can't stretch my definition of Southern Gothic to truly fit it, and it's certainly not a thriller. Nor would I call Deel a "Faulknerian" character, as the editorial review has the temerity to do. Undertow is basically just a real oddball of a movie that somehow succeeds at being fascinating despite itself.

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