Shotgun Stories
(2007)
I saw the trailer for this at IFC during my M5 of March 22, 2008, and I was not much impressed; if I'd had a chance to see it in the theater, I doubt that I would have recognized what would come to make Jeff Nichols maybe my favorite writer-director of his generation who is not my child.
From a distance, though, I can see his deft hand at foreboding and understatement: in a film whose soul is violence, there are only a couple of violent acts onscreen, and the violence that looms is far more unsettling than any we see.
The setup evokes Shakespeare via Twain: a violent drunkard has 3 sons, Son (Michael Shannon, at the heart of every one of Nichols's films), Boy, and Kid, then leaves them and their damaged, hate-filled mother, finds Jesus, dries out, remarries, and has four more sons, all of whom get actual names. When he dies, Son comes to the funeral and calls bullshit on the eulogy, and the enmity that has simmered for decades flashes into the menace of a blood feud.
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