Movie Review:
09-02-10 Movie Review: Get Low
I suppose because of the Labor Day weekend, I have NO non-commercial movies showing between now and Wednesday, but I do have a hearty recommendation to make.
Get Low
(L to R: Robert Duvall, Lucas Black, Bill Murray)
(Click to enlarge)
Wichita moviegoers gratified me by making Winter’s Bone a multi-week offering, and those who enjoyed it should also enjoy Get Low, whether I can explain the title or not. Although Get Low does not present such a grisly and primitive society as Winter’s Bone does, it features a protagonist who would have understood the people in Winter’s Bone more completely than you or I probably can.
Robert Duvall plays a hermit who follows his own code to the extent of having almost no communication with the townspeople even when he does have to go to town for supplies, and who greets visitors to his woodland cabin with rifle shots, though he clearly does not want to hit anybody. He speaks seldom and uses few words when he does, making his uncomplicated meanings unmistakable with one-syllable words when a blow will not do. He is not likable, but he doesn’t ask for anything and does no harm, and if people circulate unpleasant stories about him, he doesn’t object; he doesn’t expect the world to follow his rules, except for leaving him the hell alone, which we suppose is his right. If he’s lonely, he doesn’t show it, and he doesn’t look for company. If the world around him is more attractive than the world in Winter’s Bone, it apparently isn’t attractive to him.
So why does he want to have a funeral party for himself, when he seems to be solid as a cathedral and good for another decade at least? This is the big mystery of Get Low, and don’t swallow the red herrings that keep leading you down false trails until the very end; there are as many clues as a mystery movie should provide, but you won’t figure out what’s going on; at least, I certainly didn’t, and despite my utter failure with Inception, I usually do pretty well with such simple-seeming clues as Get Low provides. Fortunately, even if you feel smugly that you have the plot figured out, there is plenty more to keep you interested in Get Low.
For one thing, there is a variety of colorful, curious, and very well-acted characters.
Bill Murray’s funeral director is partly the customary Murray under-reactor who delights us with his inability to respond to anything the way we would, in fact almost his inability to react at all; but there’s an attractive honesty in him concerning his semi-criminal past, even if we are not sure what his up to now. He’s an interesting counterpart to Duvall’s stoic hermit, similar in having his own code but contrasting in his openness about it and in the concern for social appearances that his slightly ridiculous costumes reveal. Sissy Spacek is a native of the town who has recently returned, much affected by big-city fashions and probably pretty sophisticated, but still appreciative of Robert Duvall for what he used to be in the old days, though we never learn much about what that was.
There is a preacher from a faraway town, played by Bill Cobb, who knows the solution to the mystery but drops only tantalizing hints about it: like Winter’s Bone one more time, Get Low lets you know the general pattern of the story, but you’ll yearn for the details.
And when they come, they are both logical and revealing of more than just the plot. Get Low would be poorly served by being looked at as a mere mystery story, but mystery writers could do worse than look to it for examples of their art at its best.
Robert Duvall interview on NPR
