I read recently how the great 20th century Southern writer Eudora Welty joked that the first questions a southerner asks upon meeting a newcomer are “who are your people?” and “where are you from?”. In the consciousnesses of the vast majority of southerners - even to this day - clan, family, and community are the windows through which all of life is primarily viewed. The few southerners who do not view the world accordingly are more than likely transplants from the North, migrants and misfits in the southern world of SEC football, sweet tea, and deep fried vegetables. Southerners are defined by their family names, their hometowns, and their work. That is why old southern families give their children christian names based after familial last names, why entire towns root so entirely and so passionately for local football teams - on the high school and college levels - and why many farmers and small businessman strive tirelessly in their cotton and tobacco fields, in their shops and store rooms, as big business scythes and corporate plows destroy a way of life so intimately a part of southern history and life.

For many years, this community-centric view of life was the inspiration for some of the greatest artists and works of art American culture has ever known, especially in the world of fiction. Joining Miss Welty in the canon of classic southern literature are notables like Flannery O’Connor, William Faulkner, Walker Percy, even Harper Lee, and more recently Wendell Berry. Indeed, at the very heart of the stories these authors wrote was (or is) a firm belief in the power of community as redemptive force and place as a source of hope, themes without which their work would be radically and indistinguishably different. Welty grew up in, and was highly influenced by, the Mississippi back country, whose distinguishing habits and personalities her job as a journalistic photographer allowed her to observe closely. Faulkner too was shaped by his life in rural Mississippi. For O’Connor it was her youth in Georgia and her adult home at Andalusia. For Percy it was New Orleans and the Cajun deep south. For Harper Lee it was Alabama. And, of course, rural Kentucky was the breeding ground for Berry’s rich imagination and deeply personal characters. That each of these writers could so exquisitely examine and condemn their own places (as some of them are accused of - or famous for - doing) is a testament not to their cynicism towards the local ways of life (the local color, if you will), but rather deeply felt desires that their homes be perfected, potential fully realized. For they believed there is in every life, however big or small, the potential for great grace - but also great sin. Between these paradoxical pillars, Welty and Co. might argue, stand the lumbering figures of tradition and community, arms outstretched, bearing upon their shoulders the weight of a tumbling culture.

It is true that in each of these author’s works appears what O’Connor calls “the grotesque,” but only in so much as grace is offered in response. That the “grotesque” often defeated the grace-full is, again, not a testament to cynicism, but rather a testament to what O’Connor referred to as “realism.” She argued that southerners had “such a penchant for writing about freaks… because…” “they are still able to recognize one.” She suggests that because of its emphasis on community and place, Southern culture is able to recognize what a “whole” man looks like, and therefore is able to understand what a “freak” (i.e., the grotesque) looks like. In other words, the southerner, and specifically the southern artist, knows that when the grace-full and the grotesque clash, there is always the hopeful possibility that the grace-full will be victorious. As she wrote in her essay The Fiction Writer & His Country, “… redemption is meaningless unless there is cause for it in the actual life we live…” She and her fellow southern artists operate(d) under the conviction that such cause is a reality. And a meaningful reality.

Now, you may be asking what all this has to do with cinema, particularly modern cinema, and I will address this presently, but before I do let me clarify some terms.

By “southern writer” or “southern artist” I do not mean some consistent school of thought or philosophical paradigm, other than the one I have set forth above. Indeed, each of these authors wrote with differing styles, with unique idioms, and with, at times, contradictory views of just what makes grace grace and the grotesque grotesque. Rather, I mean writers and artists who are southerners; that is, who lived - or live - in the southern parts of the United States, and were - or are - influenced by its particular cultural sensibilities and regional traditions. That being the case, it is (almost) neccessarily true that they would believe in the importance of the life of the community.

By “grace-full” I mean an element in a story or piece of art that conveys, in some way, beauty, love, compassion, hope, or generosity, etc, in the face of dark odds: that conveys the true joy and mystery of life. This could be a character, a place, an occurrence, even a tree.

By “grotesque” I mean an element in a story or piece of art that conveys, in some way, the sad truths that life is at times a burden; a painful experience; a haunting nightmare: that conveys that sin is always in our midst. Similarly, this could be a character, a place, an occurrence, and yes, even a tree.

In another of her essays, O’Connor rightly predicted that southern artists with an emphasis on community would soon disappear and be replaced by artists of mood and fashion: artists who create what is in style, who create for the moment and in the moment, rather than through an examination of a common people in a common place, steeped in the rhythms of time eternal. Sound familiar? This kind of art will necessarily fail to last. And while she has been right, for the most part, about the literary world (Berry and a few others remain devoted), the world of independent cinema has finally risen as a champion of the ideals she and her southern contemporaries believed in. Notable indie filmmakers like Joel and Ethan Coen, Robert Altman, and Charles Burnett and Terrence Malick to an extent, have explored and championed the southern way of life with great success. But few filmmakers have explored Welty and Co.’s ideas of the grace-full and the grotesque so fully or with such profundity as young directors David Gordon Greene and Jeff Nichols.

Stylistically, the two young filmmakers are similar, so while I highly suggest Greene’s films George Washington and All the Real Girls, I am going to focus on Nichols’ recent, debut film Shotgun Stories (produced by Greene, in fact), a Hatfields & McCoys revenge tale of the highest and most profound order.

The film, which takes place in a small, “dead-ass,” southeast Arkansas farming town, traces several volatile weeks in the lives of three brothers, named only Son, Kid, and Boy by their “hateful” mother and abusive, drunkard father. The film infers, albeit subtly, that the father abused and mistreated the boys; if not physically, then surely emotionally. Furthermore, while his sons were still young boys, the father seems to have abandoned them, leaving their upbringing to their bitter mother. And her bitterness was passed on to her sons.

However, following a stint in rehab, the father “found Jesus” and cleaned up his act, so to speak. He became a part of a church, an active and conscientious member of the small community (there’s that community idea again!), and an entirely different kind of family man: a loving husband to a new wife and a nurturing father to four new sons. He became a successful farmer and a well respected man about town. Despite their father’s hopeful turnaround, however, Son, Kid and Boy remained mired in the hopeless doldrums of their childhood. They grew up poor - both in spirit and financially - and lonely, close only with one another.

When the film begins, we learn that Son (played masterfully by Michael Shannon), now a young man (probably in his early thirties), is separated from his wife who took their son with her. Kid is living in Son’s backyard in a tent and hopes to get married, but he has no job and no significant prospects. Boy lives in his van, primarily down by the river. Son spreads seed at a local fishery, Kid mostly loiters about town with his girlfriend and a buddy named Shampoo, and Boy spends his time coaching a local youth basketball team and attempting to fix his broken car stereo. Son is plagued by a gambling habit he can’t - or won’t - kick and by the haunting memories of his past, a past that left him marked by mysterious scars on his back, scars from the pellets of a shotgun. He is a proud man who has little to be proud of, he is a caring man who rarely is able to show it, he is a man filled with rage and hate, each bursting at the seams of his being, festering and festering, preparing to erupt. It is upon all Son’s many complexities that this story is primarily built.

But Kid and Boy are different than their older brother. While Son is marked with scars and memories, Kid is a good looking young man, athletic, lean, and tan. Whereas Son is sullen and rarely speaks, Kid is jovial and quick to smile. He is a dreamer who hopes to build a new life for himself, who hopes to raise a family. Boy, on the other hand, is neither proud nor a dreamer. He is insecure and often silent, often awkward in public, and usually a peacemaker. He is a man of simple tastes and few affections, and he rarely shows his true feelings. These are people who have more going on inside their heads then they care to show on their faces: they are the deepest, most intense kind of characters.

A short time into the film, the three brothers learn that their father has died and they decide to go the funeral - or rather, to crash the funeral. They show up at the graveside service in dirty t-shirts and ratty jeans, looking like they recently woke up with a hangover, and instead of paying their respects to their half brothers and their father’s widow, Son callously tells his side of the story and lets it be known, in no uncertain terms, that he has no great affection for the dead man. Then he spits on the casket. Naturally, his half brothers are none to pleased and a minor scuffle ensues. Before anyone gets hurt, Son, Kid, and Boy leave, no harm done. Yet. As the following weeks pass an intense rivalry builds between the two sets of brothers that leads to the violent and tragic climax of the film.

On the one hand, Son and his brothers are poor and hopeless, suffering from the repercussions of their father’s early life, proud and abundantly set on getting revenge for the cards they have been dealt. On the other hand are their four half brothers, each part of a successful family and the sons of a respected man, each on the way to their own successes. What makes them the same is their similarly faithful devotion to their clans, to their immediate families, to their family name. Son seems to want to wipe out the implications of their father’s name, while the other side wants to remember him for his good years and as the man he became. The feud begins with a few punches and some strong words, but when tragedy strikes, almost inadvertently, both sides are all in and it comes down to the river and the turn.

What makes Shotgun Stories so absurdly powerful - and so southern - is the way that the sets of brothers are so devoted to one another. For Son, Kid and Boy, the only hope of a new life, the only hope of stepping out from beneath the gloomy shadow of their father is through one another. However, the other brothers view each other as quite the opposite: evidence of hope and change and a future. And neither side is willing to lose, for they are defined by their families. As a character in an O’Connor or Berry or Faulkner story might, the brothers rise up in defense of one another and declare war. But its a cycle, and its a nasty cycle that seems destined to go on for a long time. If it is to end then somebody must decide if they are willing to do good, to do what is right; in other words, if they will do the “grace-full” or the “grotesque.”

Like O’Connor, Faulkner, Berry, Welty and the rest, director Jeff Nichols creates a place and time and characters that reveal to the watchful viewer how meaningful redemption truly is, for in this small Arkansas farming town, and in these lives, exist the “cause” that O’Connor wrote about. Son and Kid and Boy are simple people but they are passionate, and in all their passion they are broken. And in their brokenness there is room for redemption. For when the “grace-full” and the “grotesque” clash, it is possible that the “grace-full” will be victorious.

Like a good southern tale, Shotgun Stories is rousingly intense in its emotional simplicity. It is a film of images - and beautiful, metaphorical images at that - and is never rushed; instead of simply telling viewers what to believe it deals in nuance. It is not a film for the impatient. But despite the fact that it is raw and bare and has extended moments of silence and introspection, is not a complicated film in terms of production, and the performances are reserved and simple (appropriately), Nichol’s film speaks as loudly and boldly as any film has in recent memory. It is a powerful and provocative story of the modern American south and is the kind of art that will last, that is, indeed, steeped in the rhythms of time eternal.

Hopefully Shotgun Stories is a sign that a new voice is rising in Dixie, one that recaptures the heartbreaking themes and excruciating tones so brilliantly captured by an earlier, glorious era of southern art - the kind of art that O’Connor wrote about, the kind that understands what you mean when you ask “who are your people?” and “where are you from?”.

Here is the trailer:

David Kern is a fan of folk music, inspiring and challenging films, and literature that makes him want to be a part of the story. You can see more of his reviews and opinions at his blog: www.besidethequeue.wordpress.com. You can email him at david [at] intothehill.com.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 1st, 2008 at 1:35 pm and is filed under Film Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.