If you're a reader of contemporary fiction, watching a film by
David Gordon Green might remind you of just about any of the
novels of John Grisham, except that in "Undertow," which
Green made after carrying away a Best First Film award from
the New York Film Critics' Circle with "George Washington,"
nobody bothers suing anyone. Gaining justice by one's own
hand is so much quicker and more redemptive. Fratricide and
patricide both serve as the picture's melodramatic devices,
though much of "Undertow" is naturalistic, as cinematographer
Tim Orr gives us a sharp sense of place in the rural south where
outhouses and a deficit of running water are de rigeuer even in
this 21st century.
Green tackles both a coming-of-age subgenre and, though
discussions about the Greek myth of Charon's ferrying people to
Hades, prepares us for a violent scene that could have come
out of the early pages of Genesis.
Young Jamie Bell is the primary focus of this venture in the role
of 16-year-old Chris, who lives in the woods with his dad, John
(Dermot Mulroney), and is so discontent with the hard life of a
pig farmer that he commits petty annoyances. In one such
instance he breaks the window of his would-be girl friend, thus
alienating the girl's father–from whom the barefoot lad runs so
swiftly that he punctures his foot on a plank with a rusty nail and
just keeps on running, board, nail and all. Chris's 10-year-old
brother Tim (newcomer Devon Alan) is a sickly lad allegedly
afflicted with an ulcer, which the dull-minded kid treats by eating
paint. Throwing up becomes a major pastime for the boy.
When daddy John's brother Deel (Josh Lucas) shows up at
what passes for John's home after serving some time in jail, he
signals soon enough that he's really after some rare Mexican
coins that John has hidden, prompting Deel to think of fratricidal
revenge–particularly since John also stole Deel's girl from him
and made her his wife.
"Undertow," then, is a blend of standard melodrama latched on
to a naturalistic plot, the two styles living side by side not with
complete comfort. For the most part, "Undertow" is a chase
movie without car crashes, as we watch the 16-year-old and the
10-year-old run frantically from Deel, who is about to do the
boys no good considering that they witnessed the commission
of a crime. As in any road movie, the principal characters run
into an assortment of characters, the childless black couple in
particular, who take the two in and giving them good food in
return for work while passing on the story of their own
misfortunes. A good deal of the film consists of film-school
tricks with the camera, such as freeze-frame, shifting to black-
and-white, and featuring one particular shot shown as a
negative–not all of these choices being necessarily obvious.
Director Green calls his pic a "balls-to-the-wall" thriller, but while
the suspense builds up thanks in part to a reliably eerie
soundtrack from Philip Glass, the more interesting parts are also
the least violent as we ponder some of the ways we ourselves
got into trouble as youngsters and how we dealt with the
consequences.
Copyright © 2004 Harvey Karten
out of 4
