Today's Review: White Bird in a Blizzard

Wrote another review for MovieScene this week. After all, I had some catching up to do in that department:

http://www.moviescene.nl/p/157936/white_bird_in_a_blizzard_-_recensie

From director Gregg Araki, we both got what we expected and we didn't, in this film's case. White Bird in a Blizzard contained all his usual themes - surrealism, teenage social issues, sexuality, death - but it lacked his usual energetic visual style. It never got recognizably 'Arakiesque'. Usually it's a not a bad thing per se when you can't tell who the director is from looking at the picture, but in this case, it's no flattery at all. White Bird is a visually unimpressive, bland picture that in many ways feels like a missed oppurtunity on this director's part. You might say he preferred to stick to the source material, this being an adaptation of somebody else's novel, but considering he did change a fair amount of things already, it would also have suited him to get the film more in line with his signature style to feel less detached and make us care more about the characters.

At least performances are good throughout the piece. Shailene Woodley makes a better impression than usual. However, it's Eva Green who steals the show while playing her mother. That too, doesn't help the movie much, as it's not her show (hence the proverbial 'stealing'). In fact, it's much more about her absence than it is about her presence, but when she graces the screen, the movie lightens up considerably. Green does an excellent job portraying a seemingly perfect house wife, sizzling with the frustrations of a wasted life and unfulfilled desires just underneath the facade. Her unhealthy relationship with her daughter makes for the most emotional scenes, thoroughly uncomfortable yet mesmerizing to behold. However, the moment she's out of the picture, literally and figuratively,and  the story fully centers around Woodley's character just hanging out with her friends, having sex and going to college, our attention wanes. And then it uneasily evolves from a typical coming-of-age drama into a thirteen-a-dozen thriller in the second half and all the predictable dirty secrets come out. But we care too little, too late at that point.

White Bird in a Blizzard will always be compared unfavorably to that other adaptation of a literary work Araki directed, Mysterious Skin. That movie too featured all his themes (including a visually sober look), but fared a lot better combining teen angst, creepy sexual relations and a thriller component, as the movie unraveled in a way that did make us interested in the questions of what happened to whom. White Bird in a Blizzard sadly feels repetitive and redundant on Araki's resumé. But at least Green is not at fault.

Today's Mini-Review: Mud

Mud: ****/*****, or 8/10

Gritty and stern coming-of-age drama set on the banks of the mighty Mississippi in a poor, rural community where you get nothing for free, love least of all. Young boys Ellis and Neckbone (marvelous acting from newcomers Tye Sheridan and Jacob Lofland) try to make the best of a harsh life, having fun as well as their situation will allow them. Their latest find to ensure a good time: an abandoned boat swept into the treetops by a flood on a small, neglected river island. Soon someone else encroaches on this idyllic place of theirs though, a mysterious drifter named Mud (impeccable performance by Matthew McConaughey, almost making you forget the numerous lousy romcoms he has starred in in recent years by showing he can still do more demanding bits of acting). On the run from the police, Mud weaves a sympathetic tale of drama and romance which ensnares the boys into making a deal with this stranger: if they provide him with food, tools and information in his ploy to elope with his sweetheart Juniper (a battered but ever beautiful Reese Witherspoon), they can keep the boat, and, thrown in as a bonus, his gun. The boys swiftly find out Mud may be more dangerous than they at first anticipated, as his archenemy arrives in town wist a posse of bounty hunters, poised to kill their new secret associate at all costs. The audience has no illusions that Mud's stories about his life and situation are nowhere near the whole truth, if not a bunch of bald faced lies and baloney. But like the young protagonists, we cannot help but be entranced by Mud's Southern charm and seeming sincerity, especially when much of his wild tales seem to be verified as the film progresses. For Ellis, the love between Mud and Juniper is a refreshing taste of the good things in life he himself sorely lacks, as his own parents cannot get along and are moving increasingly towards a divorce which may end Ellis' life as he knows it, and not necessarily for the better. Just hitting puberty and taking his own first steps in the minefield that is love, Ellis so badly wants to believe in true love that will make people do anything to maintain it, he is blind to any hints that suggest Mud is nothing but a con man. Of course, things are indeed not as they seem, and everything points to Mud having used the boys for his own shady purposes. Despite the eventual exposure of his web of lies though, Mud gets his fair chance to redeem himself in the eyes of his former acolytes, as his nemesis and his band of brigands are moving in on him with no moral qualms of taking out anyone that has come to his aid of late, putting Ellis and Neckbone in grave danger too. A violent conclusion and an unavoidable number of deaths seems inescapable, and love seems unlikely to save the day as Ellis so firmly desired. Director Jeff Nichols (Take Shelter) doesn't go easy on his juvenile main characters and adds plenty of misery and bad luck to their already hard life, shattering their illusions and dreams for the future, but never going so far as to eliminate hope entirely. A child's notions of love and life never quite come to fruition as it had expected, he states, but good things can still come from a bad situation in the long run (which does lead to a happy ending that cannot fully avoid a bit of sentimentality). His point is made with help of a great supporting cast of excellent actors, among them the likes of Sam Shepard, Paul Sparks and Michael Shannon (the latter both Boardwalk Empire veterans). Despite the hardships their characters suffer, the swamp lands surrounding the Mississippi that Nichols introduces us to remain a place of simple beauty and hopeful dreams that no violence, betrayal or lies can hurt. And those who hope for shirtless scenes of McConaughey, as is his routine he pulls one off (literally) in this film as well.