Review

Review Date: 15-August-10
Spoiler Rating: Medium
Juju Judgment: Juicy

Get Low (2010)

Point of view and voice are essential elements of a writer's toolbox. Who is telling a story and how they are telling it both determine how a reader perceives it. While the range of perspectives is narrower for a motion picture, this holds true for screenwriting as well. Get Low, a wonderful short story/folk tale of a film, emphasizes the importance of these tools. It weaves point of view and voice into its characters' personal narratives and its overall telling. The result absorbs, amuses, and tugs at the heartstrings.

Get Low is told primarily from the vantage point of Felix Bush, a Depression-era hermit nearing the end of life, or of Buddy Robinson, an undertaker's assistant who evokes the salt of the earth. These men are richly portrayed by Robert Duvall and Lucas Black, and I hope the former is remembered when the Academy doles out Oscar nominations next year. Felix has been holed up in his backwoods lair for decades, shooting at anyone who comes near, so he creates quite a stir when he rides into town on an errand. Most of his neighbors regard him as a beast with skeletons in his closet, about which the rumor mill has supplied many details. However, to the undertaker (Bill Murray) he looks like a godsend. The business of death has slowed of late, and the service the old coot requests could bring in a lot of cash.

Felix expresses himself in the spare way you'd expect from someone who has spoken only to animals and a faded portrait over the last 40 years. His request is strange but simple. He wants to throw a funeral party to which everyone can come and tell a story about their host. As incentive to attend, he will raffle off his property. While plans for the party move forward, livened by the comic faults of the undertaker, the assistant and audience pick up clues as to why Felix yearns to hear stories about himself. Something shattering once happened to him which relates to the portrait in his cabin and a former sweetheart who has recently moved back to town (Sissy Spacek). The lady adds a new perspective because she sees Felix as she remembers him, a fascinating potential lover. Another viewpoint emerges when Felix visits a reverend (Bill Cobbs) who knows his story but believes he should exorcise his own demons. This visit reveals Felix's stubbornness and crushes his hope that somebody else will rid him of the burden of his past.

Felix's story must come out in his own wrenching words. One thing that makes it tragic is that the part he played — the guilt of which has defined his life and death — does not appear so shameful in the eyes of others. You need to be him to perceive it as he does. You may also need the vision of his time. The events described in the movie might believably occur today, especially in such rural environs. But the historical setting helps explain Felix's conscience, which suffers for reasons people wouldn't understand, or at least wouldn't admit to, these days. By blending Felix's strong, sad, nearly silent self-description with the varied impressions of others, Get Low allows the viewer to grasp how he started life, how he ended it, and how he spent the long lonely days in between.

Copyright © 2010 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.