David Gordon Green: Undertow (2004)

[Howard Schumann]

UNDERTOW

Directed by David Gordon Green (2004)

"I wanted to make men that were funny and sad and angry and happy all at the same time, to try to make a more complicated emotion out of it." - David Gordon Green

In Undertow, the third film by David Gordon Green (George Washington, All the Real Girls), two young brothers, Tim (Devon Allen) and Chris (Jamie Bell), flee their home in rural Georgia after their father (Dermot Mulroney) is murdered by his convict brother Deel (Josh Lucas). Co-produced by Terrence Malick, Undertow has aspects of a conventional thriller but it bears Green's unmistakable languid, dreamy style, though many are comparing it to Terrence Malick's Badlands and Charles Laughton's classic Night of the Hunter. Using an abundance of yellow, brown, and red tones, Cinematographer Tim Orr effectively captures the atmosphere of the poor South with its abandoned spaces, junkyards, urban rot, and backwoods pig farms. Green has a feel for the way people talk and the dialogue achieves a rare naturalism but it is not a film in the neo-realist tradition. Its lyrical tone puts it in more in the land of Huck Finn and Robinson Crusoe, territory reserved for myth and poetry.

Using freeze frames, slow motion, color manipulation, and transitional fades, the opening sequence captures Chris's escape from his girl friend's menacing father after he accidentally breaks a window trying to alert her of his presence. Impaling his foot on a board and nail, he stumbles home with his foot bleeding severely and later uses the board to make an airplane to give to his 10-year old brother, Tim. In a subplot makes us aware of the eccentricity of the characters, Tim has some strange stomach problems, and eats paint and dirt to induce vomiting, a condition, according to the director who suffered the same malady, called pica brought on by malnourishment. The early pace is leisurely but things heat up when Uncle Deel shows up. Recently out of prison, he harbors resentments against his brother for marrying his sweetheart and taking part of his inheritance of Mexican gold coins. Oddly, his brother invites him to stay at the farm but we can tell that he's there for more than hominy grits and southern fried chicken.

Resentment soon turns to violence and the boys, threatened by the wounded uncle, escape on foot seeking out food and shelter wherever it is available. On the run, they undertake a nightmarish journey through forests and swamps, on freight cars and foot, spending time with people living on the margins: a friendly black couple and some runaway girls who Chris is drawn to out of loneliness and fear. As Uncle Deel closes in, the film becomes less about the chase and more about the characters and the relationship between the brothers. Jamie Bell, the English actor who played Billy Eliot, turns in a magnificent performance as Chris and Josh Lucas is convincing as the deranged uncle. Utilizing a haunting score by Philip Glass, Undertow gradually builds its low-key tension to a power that becomes riveting. In spite of some repetitive chase scenes and a few superfluous camera tricks, it is Green's best film and deserves more than a limited release.

GRADE: A-