Mud is a love
story… or a story about loves. But it doesn’t deal in the simple or the clean. Mud is about complicated love… the
messy, sometimes misplaced, can’t-help-ourselves, confusing, dangerous,
strained-but-binding loves. Or in other words, that real-life stuff that is
between most all of the caring relationships we’ve shared in or been witness to
in our own lives. For our entertainment and enlightenment, several strains of
this emotion have been balanced and mixed skillfully together by writer/director
Jeff Nichols (Shotgun Stories, Take Shelter) and injected onto the screen. The
result is a sort of fable. But it is more familiar than dark fairy tale. It feels
authentic and honest… earthy real – and is simultaneously sobering and gratifying.
The love stories
begin with a Huck-and-Tom-like adventure. Two 14-year-old boys Ellis (Tye Sheridan)
and his best friend, Neckbone (Jacob Lofland), living in a poor community of
ramshackle houseboats on the Mississippi, have heard from another boy of a
grand spectacle on a nearby island. They find it – a boat wedged high in a tree
by a flood. After scaling the tree and entering the boat, they lay claim to it
imagining what glorious adventures could be had there. But they quickly find
that the boat is already called for by the island’s sole inhabitant - Mud
(Mathew McConaughey)… that’s his name, Mud.
“Hell of a thing
boys” Mud begins, “a boat in a tree… that’s a hell of a thing.”
Mud’s a mess –
grungy, and down to his last loaf of bread for food. He’s full of odd information
and questions, and equipped with a magic shirt that protects him but also a .45
tucked in his pants just in case. He’s
killed a man, he confesses early to the two boys, after the man assaulted the
women he loves - Juniper (Reese Witherspoon), and is hiding on the island
waiting to rendezvous with her and make an escape. He’s in a bad fix and appeals
to the boys for help in his cause and ambitious plan. Ellis needs only to hear
that the bad things Mud has done have been done for love to be hooked. Neckbone
is less convinced and senses the danger, but looks up to Ellis and reluctantly
agrees to assist - and their adventure begins.
Nichols weaves
other relationships into and around this core four, mostly vertexed through
Ellis, the young romantic trying to understand love, find evidence of its
endurance and anchor to it. The binding ties explored include those between
husband and wife and various forms of connections between fathers (of sorts)
and sons. All have their complications and deficiencies. Nichols leaves us to
our own to decide what is wrong or right about the people involved… what is true
and what is not about their actions and motivations. "You can't trust
love," Ellis’ father tells him. "If you're not careful it'll up and
run out on you." And one might think this is the moral of Mud – that love doesn’t last. But it
might be just the opposite – that love is one of the few things that endures, in different times and odd forms
wherever it may.
Marvelously cast,
beautifully shot, splendid story telling – Mud
gets 9 out of 10.
