Tag Archives: Michael Shannon

Saturday Matinee: 99 Homes

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By Sheila O’Malley

Source: RogerEbert.com

Ramin Bahrani makes films about the American Dream as seen through the eyes of those on the margins of the increasingly unrealistic “mainstream” life: immigrants, children, transplants, or those too damaged to participate anymore (like the grizzled old dude played by Red West in “Goodbye Solo“). For the most part, these people still believe in the American Dream. They hope, strive, plan. But the system has failed them. The system is broken, and never more broken than in Bahrani’s latest film, “99 Homes,” starring Michael Shannon, Andrew Garfield and Laura Dern.

“Don’t get emotional about real estate,” warns real estate broker Rick Carver (Shannon) throughout “99 Homes,” as people are forcibly evicted after defaulting on bank payments. Carver’s may be practical advice, considering the economic crash and the housing crisis, but it is also heartless. Real estate to Rick Carver means money and opportunity; real estate to everyone else means “home,” and what is more emotional to human beings than the concept of “home”? 

The film opens with a brutal eviction sequence, filmed in one take. Blood spatters the bathroom walls as the resident commits suicide, all as the sheriff’s department swoops through the house, overseen by Rick Carver, a shark-eyed man in an ill-fitting blue suit, smoking a glowing-blue electric cigarette. The story shifts to Dennis Nash (Andrew Garfield), a single dad living with his mother (Laura Dern) and his little boy Connor (Noah Lomax) in the family home. Mom works a hairdressing business out of the living room. Dennis works construction but jobs are hard to come by. Nobody’s building anymore. Bills pile up. They are in danger of losing their home. Dennis goes to court to fight for more time, he tries to get a lawyer to work pro bono.

One day, the reckoning arrives. The sheriff’s department shows up, led by Rick, to evict them. In a harrowing scene of mounting panic, Dennis and his mother protest as Rick drawls, both easily and with enormous aggression, “This isn’t your house anymore, son.” The fight that ensues is acted and filmed with almost unbearable immediacy (cinematographer Bobby Bukowski does superb work throughout). Given two minutes to vacate, the hyperventilating family pile up whatever possessions they can fit into the back of a pick-up truck, and head to a cheap motel, filled with people in the same situation. “We’ve been here two years now,” says a woman.

Dennis will do what it takes to get his home back, including accepting a job working construction for his nemesis Rick. It’s a deal with the devil, and all that that implies. Dennis gets sucked into Carver’s circle of easy cash, shady deals. Within almost no time, Dennis is on the other side of those evictions, standing in the doorway, waiting for the confused angry residents to vacate. The door-to-door sequences are masterful. These people don’t seem to be professional actors (although they may be), their reactions are so raw and real. The audience is placed in the uncomfortable position of voyeurs, eavesdroppers, on a human being’s lowest moment. 

“99 Homes” operates like a thriller (from its stunning opening one-take sequence), with elements of melodrama to heighten the stakes. (Some of the melodramatic elements don’t work as well as the rest, relying, as they do, on coincidence, racing against the clock, etc; the reality is horrifying enough.) Held together with Antony Partos and Matteo Zingales’ portentous original score, thrumming underneath almost every scene, “99 Homes” represents a shift for Bahrani. His other features have been small dramas, filmed accordingly: lots of hand-held camera work and a naturalistic approach. “99 Homes” has a strong look, a bold mood, with attention-getting shots like that opener, as well as a couple of aerial shots showing homes stretched out below. From that vantage point, homes look generic. To those on the ground, of course, it’s a very different story. 

Andrew Garfield, as a man who has “failed” in his duty as protector and provider, has an almost constant sense of panic throughout, catching his breath in his throat, his posture tight and alert. Tears threaten to overwhelm him, but Dennis does not have time for self-pity. Nobody does. His one goal is to get his house back, the crevasse of permanent instability opening beneath him and his family. Bahrani keeps that heat turned up in the machinations of the plot, as Carver seduces Dennis with offers of wealth (meaning, in Carver’s world, self-respect). “America doesn’t bail out losers,” Carver tells Nash. “America bails out winners.”

Michael Shannon is both ruthless and strangely tender in his seemingly irredeemable character. Carver explains his background to Dennis, his humble roots, his roofer father, his jobs in construction. Up until the crash, his job was putting people into homes. It’s not his fault that his job has now become throwing people out. Any hard economic time will create a man like Rick Carver, determined to make more money off the slump than the boom. It’s a very honest performance. 

Reminiscent of the films of Jafar Panahi (which also focus on those on the margins), Bahrani’s films are a critique of the very concept of “mainstream.” If there is to be a mainstream, then the boundaries must be more inclusive. Bahrani’s films represent an urgent demand that audiences pay attention to the world and the people around them. His films insist: Look. See. Bahrani accomplishes this not by making “message” films, but by focusing on individual characters, whether it be a Pakistani former singer who now pushes a food cart in Manhattan (“Man Push Cart,”) a little Latino boy working in an auto-body shop (“Chop Shop,”) or the optimistic Senegalese-American who drives a cab and dreams of being a flight attendant (“Goodbye Solo.”) Through these characters, Bahrani critiques American life, its economics, its class divides, its assumptions and social strata. Like Panahi, he is a humanist. The dignity of the individual is all. 

“99 Homes” is a ferocious excavation of the meaning of home, the desperation attached to real estate, the pride of ownership and the stability of belonging. The pace never lets up. Once a person slips below the mainstream, it is nearly impossible to gain a foothold again. These characters struggle like hell to survive.

Saturday Matinee: Midnight Special

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Source: Deep Focus Review

People put their faith in the strangest things. Some feel their god will return to cast down judgment on humankind. Others are certain beings from another solar system planted genetic material on Earth to create life. And some believe, or perhaps not, that a flying spaghetti monster lives in the sky. Here’s another one: Folk music history tells us a train called the Southern Pacific Golden Gate Limited ran near Sugar Land prison in Texas, where legendary Blues man Lead Belly heard it passing. He and other inmates believed the train represented some sign of hope that soon they would be set free. Lead Belly later popularized a song about it, called “Midnight Special”, featuring a lyric in which he asks the train to “shine a light on me”. Apart from memorable covers by Harry Belafonte, Bob Dylan, and Credence Clearwater Revival, Lead Belly’s folk song informs the title of writer-director Jeff Nichols’ fourth film, Midnight Special.

People in the film believe some strange things, too. Some of them believe a young boy will grant their way to salvation, while the government believes that same boy is a threat to national security. But more on the specifics later. These belief systems pervade Nichols’ screenplay, a slow-burner infused with soulful character depth and science-fiction underpinnings. Midnight Special has much in common with Nichols’ excellent Take Shelter (2011), about a working-class family plagued by the father’s apocalyptic premonitions. That otherwise grassroots, southern-fried suspenser contains fantastical elements, though really it’s about the extremes people will go to chase what they believe. Nichols has explored similar American spirituality in his other two films, Shotgun Stories (2007) and Mud (2011). Each of his films demonstrates the potential danger inherent to blindly following our beliefs and convictions.

Nichols’ calculated opening demands the audience take time to figure out what’s happening and why, who the good guys are, and in the end, what just came to pass. It’s a picture audiences must feel their way through in the best possible way. An Amber Alert blares across the television screen, a reporter notifying us a young boy named Alton has been kidnapped by a man named Roy. As the shot pulls back, we find ourselves in a motel room with Roy (Michael Shannon, severe as ever) and Alton (Jaeden Lieberher), who, behind an ever-present pair of swimming goggles, reads a comic book by flashlight. Also in the room is a crew-cut man of action, Lucas (Joel Edgerton). They’re waiting until the sun goes down to continue their getaway. Lucas drives fast and without headlights, wearing night vision headgear to see the highway in the pitch dark.

Nichols cross-cuts to things at “The Ranch”—a Texas compound not unlike David Koresh’s Branch Davidians—populated by old-world types in hand-sewn garb. They’re led by a quietly intense organizer named Calvin (Sam Shepard), who wants Alton returned to him. The FBI raids The Ranch and puts everyone on buses to a secure location. They ask questions about Calvin’s people buying guns and about Alton’s kidnapping. A bookish NSA specialist named Sevier (Adam Driver) wants to know about Alton, who came in contact with him, and what they know about the boy’s abilities. And so we must wonder, why so many questions about this boy? The answer: When Alton is exposed to the sun, beams of light shoot from his eyes; he seems to speak in tongues; he can give people visions; in space, satellites meant to detect nuclear explosions spy an energy source emitting from him; he also picks up radio signals in his head.

But what is he? Nichols never answers that question outright. Over time, we learn Roy is Alton’s father, and Lucas is Roy’s friend, and together they’re protecting Alton from The Ranch and the government. All parties concerned feel a great power exists inside the boy and, though they don’t completely understand it, they fearfully pursue and defend him. Soon Alton’s mother (Kirsten Dunst) joins Roy and Lucas, aware of the entire plan. We learn all of Alton’s peculiarities have a hidden encryption, coordinates that point to a certain spot on a specific day. Everything depends on getting him there on time. And gradually, as men from The Ranch get closer to recapturing Alton, and the government goons track down their perceived threat, we get a greater—but not clearer—sense of what might occur if and when Alton arrives at his destination.

Rather than frustrating, that lack of transparency is engrossing, as Nichols drops hints here and there, while he binds us to the often moving, unquestionably engaging proceedings through subtle character work. So what is Alton? He finds great interest reading a Superman comic, so perhaps he’s something like Superman, a powerful alien. Perhaps he’s a messiah sent to protect people at The Ranch. Maybe he’s an advanced form of human with mutant powers, a time traveler, a living weapon, or an inter-dimensional being. Whatever the answer, it’s less important than the real-life descriptions of the humans on Nichols’ journey. His actors carry impressive weight and gravitas, particularly Shannon, who has appeared in each of Nichols’ films. But the entire cast brings substance to their performances, involving the audience in the tense, measured development of the story.

Both narratively and technically, Nichols has used the films of Steven Spielberg and John Carpenter to inform Midnight Special, but not in such a way that it feels distractingly derivative. From the perspective that the film operates as a road movie driving toward some manner of grandiose sci-fi conclusion, the film feels like Close Encounters of the Third Kind; the ending, too, resembles Spielberg’s wondrous 1977 effort. Elsewhere, Starman (1984) comes into play, as everyone who meets Alton gravitates to his kindness, soulful sureness, and power, just as everyone in Carpenter’s film found Jeff Bridges’ alien character a kind of angelic figure. Even the ending seems to combine the finales of these two films, with a touch of E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial. The film also bears some similarity to Tomorrowland, although the association is undoubtedly unintentional. All the while, Adam Stone’s textured 35mm lensing captures familiar lens flares and widescreen compositions from Carpenter and Spielberg that influenced Nichols.

Questions about what happens in its marvelous climactic scenes aside, Midnight Special shines a light on the audience by offering a unique combination of the realistic and out-of-this-world. Nichols develops thoroughly dimensional characters, even among the not-irredeemable “villains” of the story. The director cares about Roy’s heavy brow and Sevier’s sense of unsure awe; with them, he develops intimate moments that effectively resonate further than the sci-fi gimmick. He never overplays the drama, such as a scene in which Alton tells his father not to worry about him. Roy replies, “I like worrying about you.” The understatedness of Nichols’ drama, the poignancy, renders a picture about how people react to what they believe or do not understand. Some embrace it; some fear it. No matter the reaction, Nichols finds a way to represent that through an engaging metaphor in his profoundly affecting and, in many ways extraordinary thriller.

Watch Midnight Special on Hoopla here: https://www.hoopladigital.com/title/14507307