Chris Knipp
08-09-2010, 10:33 PM
Aaron Schneider: GET LOW (2010)
http://a.imageshack.us/img404/2871/getlow.jpg
ROBERT DUVALL, LUCAS BLACK AND BILL COBBS IN GET LOW
Old Man Attends Own Funeral, Tells All
Review by Chris Knipp
Somewhere in Tennessee in 1930 an old man called Felix Bush, who has hidden out in the woods for forty years, comes into town looking for a funeral -- his own. He wants to arrange it, watch it, and hear what people have to say about him as it unfolds. That's the premise of Get Low, which winds up with a man being buried alongside the graves of his favorite dogs. If you like old codgers, Robert Duvall (now 79) has been honing this performance for decades; some think he was a little young for such roles when he started playing them. But he's not now.
In Get Low, there is not much action but there is a lot of acting. Besides the leather-tough Duvall in the role of Felix Bush there is the incomparably droll Bill Murray as Frank Quinn, Chicago ex-used car salesman turned small town undertaker, eager in a dry season (people aren't dying) to make himself the indispensable man in this enterprise, and a creature as sly and slippery as Duvall is down-home and straight-talking. Lucas Black as Buddy, Quinn's assistant, gives a solid performance as a clean-cut corn pone country boy with a young wife and baby and a rural twang. As Bush's old flame Mattie Darrow, Sissy Spacek, though twenty years Duvall's junior, convinces and has never looked or sounded better, even if she hasn't all that much to do other than look touched and shocked and then bolt. Bill Cobbs fits like an old shoe of the best leather as Rev. Charlie Jackson, a black minister from up north Bush did a serious good turn for long ago. And Gerald McRaney, an authentic Mississippian, feels right too as the local town white preacher, Rev. Gus Horton, who will have no truck with Bush's plan.
Schneider doesn't have the kind of confidence and dash that give the early scenes of Jarmusch's Dead Man such a starkly original period flavor. He does not seem to realize that the burning little wood house in the opening credits would have been more effective with only the crackling of the fire -- and without the surging string orchestra. No matter if the dialogue is less than brilliant; when Duvall or Murray have the camera, they know how to hold our attention. These seasoned actors settle easily into their wooly clothes, dark interiors, and old cars. They look and sound right -- even though the truth is Duvall doesn't have the pungency and edge of his best work and neither does Murray. Strangely, at moments Duvall seems to be channeling Christopher Walken in his intonations, and you realize delivery as stylized as Walken's might have given these flat speeches some welcome zing. But this ain't Tarantino or Martin McDonagh. It's a mellow monochrome of an old-fashioned kind of movie, ideal for older audiences, and geared to delight devotees of quaint period action. Schneider has been a cinematographer for two decades, and the images, which one may remember as rich black and white despite the toned-down color, are a pleasure to dwell upon.
And dwell upon them we must. Action remains the weak point, and there are shortcomings in the narrative too. The screenplay by Chris Provenzano and C. Gaby Mitchell from a story by Proenzano and Scott Seeke is based on a true story of a man who invited the whole community to a grand funeral while he was alive. Something got lost in the translation. There is the matter of the pace. Though much is made of the speed of Quinn's shiny undertaker car, used to drive Bush up to see the black minister, Get Low, despite its quick moments of drollery, moves too slow. That would not matter if the suspense were better handled and threads were not left dangling --but it isn't; and they are. In early scenes, it emerges that Bush has been a terror to the town; whether for things done or only rumors is unclear. But when rudely addressed by a town bully, Bush, this frail old goat, beats the man up, establishing a capacity for meanness and violence that lingers even at his advanced age. People keep saying there are stories about Bush, and Bush says that at the funeral he wants to hear them. Bush also comes up with a scheme that deeply excites the Depression-poor undertaker: a lottery that costs $5 to enter, with Bush's property, including 300 acres, going to the winner at the funeral party. It is to be a party, and as many enter the lottery, a big crowd is expected to attend and, presumably, tell their stories.
But it also emerges that Bush's forty years living like a hermit (with only a mule and a string of dogs as company and grilled rabbit as sustenance) are penance for some wrongdoing he has wanted to punish himself for, and both reverends have made very clear the old man needs to ask forgiveness too if he wants to qualify for salvation.
Unfortunately, Bush winds up making an Oprah-style self-revelation on a stage in front of the gathered multitude -- who seem only a handful compared to the twelve or thirteen hundred of the original incident. This confession, implausible in such a tight-lipped man (who was going to listen to the others) straightens things out with Mattie. But how the gathered townspeople take it isn't made clear. As far as we can see, they just go home.
But wait a minute. What about the lottery? What about all the stories about the old man the townspeople have been harboring for four decades and he wanted to hear? This was to be a story about stories, and instead there's just a lame little fragment, like an apologetic shard from Michael Winterbottom's The Killer Inside Me. Here is a story about a big party, but no partying, no real closeups of the action of the guests. How do they like it? What do they get out of it? How does this crowd of Southern whites in 1930 take to being lectured by a black preacher? No answers. After a sweet (and obvious) little reconciliation scene with Mattie, the movie jump-cuts us hastily to the ending. Get Low counts too much on the novelty of the funeral for a live man. By the time Bush declares he's in limbo between alive and dead the tension of that idea has dwindled, and the whole charade will only matter if it serves a purpose. But the way the big speech is staged with TV-style closeups delivers no catharsis. Nice, very nice, try, and it is fun along the way, but the outcome does not justify the long journey. Oscar bait? This year's Crazy Heart? Maybe. Another little movie to garner a great actor a lifetime achievement award. But I prefer to remember Col. Kilgore. I love the smell of napalm in the morning.
http://a.imageshack.us/img404/2871/getlow.jpg
ROBERT DUVALL, LUCAS BLACK AND BILL COBBS IN GET LOW
Old Man Attends Own Funeral, Tells All
Review by Chris Knipp
Somewhere in Tennessee in 1930 an old man called Felix Bush, who has hidden out in the woods for forty years, comes into town looking for a funeral -- his own. He wants to arrange it, watch it, and hear what people have to say about him as it unfolds. That's the premise of Get Low, which winds up with a man being buried alongside the graves of his favorite dogs. If you like old codgers, Robert Duvall (now 79) has been honing this performance for decades; some think he was a little young for such roles when he started playing them. But he's not now.
In Get Low, there is not much action but there is a lot of acting. Besides the leather-tough Duvall in the role of Felix Bush there is the incomparably droll Bill Murray as Frank Quinn, Chicago ex-used car salesman turned small town undertaker, eager in a dry season (people aren't dying) to make himself the indispensable man in this enterprise, and a creature as sly and slippery as Duvall is down-home and straight-talking. Lucas Black as Buddy, Quinn's assistant, gives a solid performance as a clean-cut corn pone country boy with a young wife and baby and a rural twang. As Bush's old flame Mattie Darrow, Sissy Spacek, though twenty years Duvall's junior, convinces and has never looked or sounded better, even if she hasn't all that much to do other than look touched and shocked and then bolt. Bill Cobbs fits like an old shoe of the best leather as Rev. Charlie Jackson, a black minister from up north Bush did a serious good turn for long ago. And Gerald McRaney, an authentic Mississippian, feels right too as the local town white preacher, Rev. Gus Horton, who will have no truck with Bush's plan.
Schneider doesn't have the kind of confidence and dash that give the early scenes of Jarmusch's Dead Man such a starkly original period flavor. He does not seem to realize that the burning little wood house in the opening credits would have been more effective with only the crackling of the fire -- and without the surging string orchestra. No matter if the dialogue is less than brilliant; when Duvall or Murray have the camera, they know how to hold our attention. These seasoned actors settle easily into their wooly clothes, dark interiors, and old cars. They look and sound right -- even though the truth is Duvall doesn't have the pungency and edge of his best work and neither does Murray. Strangely, at moments Duvall seems to be channeling Christopher Walken in his intonations, and you realize delivery as stylized as Walken's might have given these flat speeches some welcome zing. But this ain't Tarantino or Martin McDonagh. It's a mellow monochrome of an old-fashioned kind of movie, ideal for older audiences, and geared to delight devotees of quaint period action. Schneider has been a cinematographer for two decades, and the images, which one may remember as rich black and white despite the toned-down color, are a pleasure to dwell upon.
And dwell upon them we must. Action remains the weak point, and there are shortcomings in the narrative too. The screenplay by Chris Provenzano and C. Gaby Mitchell from a story by Proenzano and Scott Seeke is based on a true story of a man who invited the whole community to a grand funeral while he was alive. Something got lost in the translation. There is the matter of the pace. Though much is made of the speed of Quinn's shiny undertaker car, used to drive Bush up to see the black minister, Get Low, despite its quick moments of drollery, moves too slow. That would not matter if the suspense were better handled and threads were not left dangling --but it isn't; and they are. In early scenes, it emerges that Bush has been a terror to the town; whether for things done or only rumors is unclear. But when rudely addressed by a town bully, Bush, this frail old goat, beats the man up, establishing a capacity for meanness and violence that lingers even at his advanced age. People keep saying there are stories about Bush, and Bush says that at the funeral he wants to hear them. Bush also comes up with a scheme that deeply excites the Depression-poor undertaker: a lottery that costs $5 to enter, with Bush's property, including 300 acres, going to the winner at the funeral party. It is to be a party, and as many enter the lottery, a big crowd is expected to attend and, presumably, tell their stories.
But it also emerges that Bush's forty years living like a hermit (with only a mule and a string of dogs as company and grilled rabbit as sustenance) are penance for some wrongdoing he has wanted to punish himself for, and both reverends have made very clear the old man needs to ask forgiveness too if he wants to qualify for salvation.
Unfortunately, Bush winds up making an Oprah-style self-revelation on a stage in front of the gathered multitude -- who seem only a handful compared to the twelve or thirteen hundred of the original incident. This confession, implausible in such a tight-lipped man (who was going to listen to the others) straightens things out with Mattie. But how the gathered townspeople take it isn't made clear. As far as we can see, they just go home.
But wait a minute. What about the lottery? What about all the stories about the old man the townspeople have been harboring for four decades and he wanted to hear? This was to be a story about stories, and instead there's just a lame little fragment, like an apologetic shard from Michael Winterbottom's The Killer Inside Me. Here is a story about a big party, but no partying, no real closeups of the action of the guests. How do they like it? What do they get out of it? How does this crowd of Southern whites in 1930 take to being lectured by a black preacher? No answers. After a sweet (and obvious) little reconciliation scene with Mattie, the movie jump-cuts us hastily to the ending. Get Low counts too much on the novelty of the funeral for a live man. By the time Bush declares he's in limbo between alive and dead the tension of that idea has dwindled, and the whole charade will only matter if it serves a purpose. But the way the big speech is staged with TV-style closeups delivers no catharsis. Nice, very nice, try, and it is fun along the way, but the outcome does not justify the long journey. Oscar bait? This year's Crazy Heart? Maybe. Another little movie to garner a great actor a lifetime achievement award. But I prefer to remember Col. Kilgore. I love the smell of napalm in the morning.