Review #661: 'Mud' (2012)

Similar to his excellent 2011 feature Take Shelter, writer/director Jeff Nichols delivers another exceptional slice of small-town Americana. Mud's story is small, and its characters hail from some backwood town in rural Arkansas, living on makeshift boathouses on the Mississippi River. Yet although the focus is on these small people and their ordinary existence, there seems to be something larger and grander in its execution. Take Shelter showed a man's (possible) mental deterioration as he envisioned the apocalypse. In Mud, a very grown-up tale is seen through the eyes of two 14 year old boys, and theme that runs throughout is love. Yet there's always the feeling that the fate of the eponymous Mud (Matthew McConaughey) and Juniper (Reese Witherspoon) could somehow have global consequences, and that if they are doomed then so are we all.

After hearing about a boat that lies at the top of a tree as the result of a flood, two teenage boys, Ellis (Tye Sheridan) and Neckbone (Jacob Lofland), travel to an island on the Mississippi River in a speed boat. They find the boat, but they also find Mud, a rugged drifter with a gun, who asks the boys to get him food in exchange for the boat. It becomes evident that Mud is an outlaw, but the boys stay true to their word and deliver the food. Mud tells them the story of Juniper, the woman he loves, and hands them a note to deliver to her. As the boys seek her out in her motel room, they find her being abused by a man who is the brother of a man that Mud murdered. Despite the dangers, Ellis stays loyal to Mud and carries out the tasks he is asked to do.

There is more than just a hint of Mark Twain to the story, but Mud is successful in combining a number of genres - Southern gothic, coming-of-age drama, and sometimes even your standard man-on-the-run thriller. Cinematographer Adam Stone, who worked with Nichols on Take Shelter and his debut Shotgun Stories (2007), captures the Mississippi River immaculately, portraying its mythic qualities so lyrically that you may think it was capable of washing Mud up on the shore of its empty island. The world seems both peaceful and violent, two themes so contrasting that we can only be seeing this world from the viewpoint of Ellis' naive and innocent mind.

The cast is stellar. McConaughey seems well on his way to redeeming himself for his years of service to terrible rom-coms with an impressive performance, harking back to his early appearance in the magnificent Lone Star (1996). Small roles for Sam Shepard and Michael Shannon round off an impressive cast, and Ray McKinnon and Sarah Paulson (both former Deadwood actors) inject raw emotion into their roles as Ellis' separating parents. But it was Tye Sheridan that stole the show for me, giving a performance way beyond his years as the honest and headstrong Ellis. The scene in which he is humiliated by the girl he thought was his girlfriend, the expression etched across Sheridan's face becomes something more profound than simple confusion. Although it dips into a slightly disappointing and generic shoot-out climax, Mud is a fine film, and one that reminds us what it is like to love, as ugly and unpredictable as it can be.


Directed by: Jeff Nichols
Starring: Matthew McConaughey, Tye Sheridan, Reese Witherspoon, Jacob Lofland, Sam Shepard, Ray McKinnon, Sarah Paulson, Michael Shannon
Country: USA

Rating: ****

Tom Gillespie