Mud

For a film entitled Mud, everything seems to shine in Jeff Nichols’ third film about two boys helping a fugitive evade the cops and reunite with his longtime love. 

Matthew McConaughey plays the titular character with charm and ease, while Reese Witherspoon breezes through as Mud’s love, Juniper, long enough to get her name in the credits. The real performances, however, come from the two child actors who play Ellis and Neckbone. 

After appearing in The Tree of Life, Tye Sheridan anchors the film as Ellis, a boy on the brink of the excitement and disillusionment of adolescence. Even with his parents headed toward divorce, Ellis holds on to his idealized notions of true love. They are his main motivation for helping Mud retrieve a boat from a tree that will hopefully lead him to Juniper and freedom. 

McConaughey repeats, “A boat in a tree; that’s a hell of a thing.” This may be true, but I’d argue more that Sheridan gives a hell of a performance. In one scene, Ellis receives his first kiss from the older May Pearl and immediately asks her to be his girlfriend. When she accepts, Sheridan gives one triumphant smile that captures the butterfly in your stomach feeling of first time love. Unfortunately, this smile doesn’t last for long. 

As his parents’ marriage becomes more volatile, Mud and Juniper’s relationship wanes and May Pearl turns up with an older boy, Ellis’ faith in love starts to crack. This comes to a head in a fight between Ellis and Mud. Sheridan depicts the anger and betrayal we all feel as our romanticized ideas of love are first shattered.

He doesn’t rely on McConaughey to bring the emotional drama to the fight, but rather has his own commanding presence and one hell of an arm. Sheridan’s loss of faith is convincing, but turns out to bite him (literally) in the end. 

In his first feature film, Jacob Lofland plays Ellis’ best friend, Neckbone. It would be easy for this southern accented orphan to come off as a stereotype, but Lowland delivers a well timed comedic performance as Ellis’ loyal friend who thankfully is also good with a wrench. 

While these performances are fun and engaging to watch, the pivotal relationship between Mud and Juniper seems underdeveloped. There isn’t a problem with either McConaughey or Witherspoon’s performances, but rather a lack of screen time and believable history to persuade me that not only are they a couple, but they are one worth fighting for. This, however, is one of the only flaws I saw in the film. 

Mud explores the many manifestations that love can take. There are several variations of romantic love, each more disappointing than the next. Nichols also depicts the father-son relationship in a literal way, between an uncle and nephew and with a surrogate father figure. Another variation highlights the loving bonds of friendship. However, one is more subtle than the rest, but permeates throughout the entire film. In its execution, Mud reads like Jeff Nichols’ personal love letter to middle America and his home state of Arkansas. 

During an opening scene Ellis helps his father ride across town and sell fish out of his truck. While the job itself doesn’t seem all that pleasant, the sequence is stunning. It’s shot during that magical time when the sun starts to melt into the Earth. Everything has the blue-gold haze of summer and youth. As they drive down a highway, you can see American flags and a sign that read “God Bless America” in the background. Nichols constructs this world with a certain authenticity and beauty that only a director from the same area could achieve. 

Mud is a regionally specific film as it takes place on the Mississippi River, but Nichols does a good job of evolving his characters beyond Southern conventions. These characters are in sensational circumstances (it is a movie after all), but they aren’t sensationalized characters. They are the ordinary, the broken, the lovesick. The type of people you would find in any riverside city in Arkansas. This realism aids in the film’s mass appeal and our ability to effortlessly invest in these characters and the film.

Now I have to admit my bias. The day before I saw Mud, I met Jeff Nichols and listened to him talk about his inspiration and the processes of making this film. On top of that, Mud was the last premiere I saw in the Lumiere theater during the Cannes Film Festival. 

While I can’t deny that I had an extraordinary viewing experience of Mud, I don’t think I would have enjoyed it any less if my first screening was in a familiar cineplex back in the states. Mud is a well-crafted uplifting drama that audiences will love no matter where they watch it.