Mud | Little White Lies

Mud

09 May 2013 / Released: 10 May 2013

A shirtless man with curly hair and tattoos stands in a natural outdoor setting.
A shirtless man with curly hair and tattoos stands in a natural outdoor setting.
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Anticipation.

Just two films in, Jeff Nichols is already one of American cinema’s most exciting directors.

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Enjoyment.

Americana at its finest.

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In Retrospect.

Nichols keeps getting better, but his masterpiece is (excitingly) still to come.

Matthew McConaughey’s sub­lime trans­for­ma­tion into A Seri­ous Actor con­tin­ues apace with this rip­ping Souther thriller.

Appar­ent­ly not will­ing to car­ry the illus­tri­ous man­tle of rom-com king into the cur­rent decade, Matthew McConaugh­ey has spent the last three years rein­vent­ing him­self as a Seri­ous Actor. From leather-clad hit­man in Killer Joe to greased-up strip-joint own­er in Mag­ic Mike and vir­tu­ous reporter in The Paper­boy, McConaugh­ey has trad­ed his easy South­ern charm for a stee­l­i­er charis­ma. And with Bagh­dad siege thriller Thun­der Run, AIDS dra­ma Dal­las Buy­ers Club and Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street forth­com­ing, it appears he’s not yet fin­ished flex­ing his thespoids.

It’s easy to for­get that at one time McConaugh­ey was being tout­ed as the new Paul New­man, hav­ing received back-to-back praise in the mid-’90s for A Time to Kill and Lone Star, the lat­ter of which has been namechecked by writer/​director Jeff Nichols for part-inspir­ing his third fea­ture. In this Deep South fairy tale, McConaugh­ey is paired for the first time with fel­low rom-com dar­lin’ Reese With­er­spoon, who sim­i­lar­ly rel­ish­es play­ing against type. But Mud doesn’t belong to either of them.

On a remote stretch of riv­er deep in the heart of Arkansas’ swamp­lands, delta dweller Ellis (Tye Sheri­dan) and buck­toothed best pal Neck­bone (Jacob Lofland) dis­cov­er a boat stuck halfway up a tree. They’re not the only ones with eyes on this strand­ed trea­sure, how­ev­er, as an enig­mat­ic drifter – dis­tin­guish­able by his grub­by white shirt, chipped front tooth and arm-length snake tat­too – makes his pres­ence known. The boys know bet­ter than to mix with strangers, but they allow their keen sense of adven­ture to over­ride their bet­ter judge­ment and strike a deal: bring Mud (McConaugh­ey) spare parts and tools to fix the boat and in return he’ll give them one of only two valu­able items in his pos­ses­sion: a six-shooter.

With his pre­vi­ous fea­tures Shot­gun Sto­ries and Take Shel­ter, Nichols proved him­self to be an assured prac­ti­tion­er of dense­ly lay­ered, atmos­pher­ic fam­i­ly dra­ma. In Mud he shifts the tone towards some­thing more sen­ti­men­tal and inno­cent, but the result is no less affect­ing. To this end, it’s the film’s young lead who shines bright­est. Mud and Ellis are hope­less­ly ide­al­is­tic kin­dred spir­its whose frac­tious rela­tion­ship pro­vides the film’s true emo­tion­al hook, and Sheri­dan, mak­ing only his sec­ond screen appear­ance fol­low­ing Ter­rence Malick’s The Tree of Life, deliv­ers the stand-out performance.

Equal parts Huck­le­ber­ry Finn’ and Stand By Me, with a swirl of Spiel­ber­gian won­der­ment and Cor­mac McCarthy col­lo­qui­al­ism, Mud is a thrilling, unapolo­get­i­cal­ly sweet and occa­sion­al­ly melo­dra­mat­ic com­ing-of-ager that con­fi­dent­ly han­dles a vari­ety of themes – true love, inno­cence, com­pan­ion­ship, divorce, revenge, sac­ri­fice, hero­ism (both real and per­ceived). It’s also quite pos­si­bly the most beau­ti­ful film ever made about the Mis­sis­sip­pi Riv­er, a bit­ter­sweet (but ulti­mate­ly opti­mistic) ode to a dying way of life.

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