Paste Magazine June/July 2010 : Page 94
WINTER’S BONE WILD GRASS GET LOW FILM frustration instead of sympathy. Mean-spiritedly theoretical, Wild Grass may be endlessly discussible, but ultimately proves to be a disagreeable chapter in Resnais’ long career. STEPHEN M. DEUSNER 3.8 GET LOW RELEASE DATE: JULY 30 DIRECTOR: Aaron Schneider WRITERS: Chris Proven-zano, C. Gaby Mitchell CINEMATOGRA-PHER: David Boyd STARRING: Robert Duvall, Sissy Spacek, Bill Murray, Lucas Black STUDIO: Sony Pictures Classics A forgettable fable WINTER’S BONE RELEASE DATE: JUNE 11 DIRECTOR: Debra Granik WRITERS: Granik, Anne Rosellini STARRING: Jen-nifer Lawrence, John Hawkes, Dale Dickey STUDIO: Roadside Attractions A small film with one big performance Recently, there’s been no shortage of neo-realist dramas depicting the American working-class (Half Nelson, Wendy and Lucy, Frozen River). Win-ter’s Bone, the Grand Jury prizewinner at this year’s Sundance, is an impres-sive addition to the list. Jennifer Lawrence stars as Ree Dolly, a 17-year-old struggling to care for her two younger siblings in the harsh, gray woods of the Ozark Mountains. Her mother is near-mute and mentally ill, and her meth-dealing father has gone missing after using their family home as col-lateral to make bail. Faced with losing everything, Ree navigates the seedy underbelly of her father’s meth circuit, determined to find him and keep her family intact. The bleak screenplay (co-written by director Debra Granik) sidesteps melodrama in favor of a murky ending that leans heavily on Lawrence. She’s up to the challenge—her shatter-ing performance is easily one of the best you’ll see this year. JEREMY MEDINA 8.4 94 PASTEMAGAZINE.COM JUNE | JULY 2010 WILD GRASS RELEASE DATE: JUNE 25 DIRECTOR: Alain Resnais WRITERS: Alex Reval, Laurent Herbiet, Chris-tian Gailly (novel) STARRING: André Dussol-lier, Sabine Azéma CINEMATOGRAPHER: Eric Gautier STUDIO: Sony Pictures Classics Leave it be Directed by celebrated French New Wave cinéaste Alain Resnais, Wild Grass begins with an image of a clump of its titular foliage growing between cracks in asphalt, the linger-ing shot allowing the beauty and ugliness of the image to sink in. If only this tedious film could sustain that un-likely balance. Georges (André Dussollier), an aging man with a much younger wife and an unspecified history of violence toward women, finds a stolen wallet belonging to Marguerite (Sabine Azéma), whose explosion of unruly red hair may be the film’s most striking visual. He stalks her, she stalks him, and their love, Resnais assures us, is like that clump of grass determinedly growing in an unlikely place. But Georges and Marguerite are less like real people with genuine motiva-tions and more like bundles of allegories, eliciting the viewer’s Get Low, a glacially-paced portrait of real-life Southern boogeyman Felix “Bush” Breazeale, does little to broaden the scope of American mythology set to celluloid. Robert Du-vall stars as the woods-secluded protagonist, who stages a funeral for himself before he’s dead, inviting anyone who’s willing to recount one of the fantastical, widely-told yarns about his life. Even with this rich premise, Get Low’s linear narrative is far too bare-bones to live up to any real-life legend. Competent per-formances from Duvall, Sissy Spacek and Bill Murray are wasted on a skeletal plot stretched into a mundane slog about an old man seek-ing redemption. Even worse, the epic fictions of Bush’s life are barely addressed, leaving us with an archaic rendi-tion of Grumpy Old Men via Washington Irving. SEAN EDGAR 5.6 !Get Low photo courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics
Publication List
