Studios are putting most of their eggs in hundred-million-dollar baskets these days, even as American independent filmmakers go hungry from lack of mainstream attention. But two of my favorite American indie writer-directors, Jeff Nichols and Ramin Bahrani, have new films with bigger stars than they've had before — films they hope will break through to wider audiences. The results, at least artistically, are impressive.
Nichols' first feature, Shotgun Stories, was a small masterpiece, the story of a blood feud between half-brothers that turns tragic. His second, Take Shelter, featured Shotgun star Michael Shannon as a man eaten alive by fear of losing his wife and child to apocalyptic forces. They're in very different keys, and Nichols' latest, Mud, is in still another. It's his Huckleberry Finn picture: It has a boy protagonist, it's set on the Mississippi River, and its narrative is both fluid and full of surprising twists.
The extraordinary Tye Sheridan plays 14-year-old Ellis. He lives on an Arkansas houseboat, where his mother is on the verge of leaving his father and selling the creekside home Ellis loves. One morning, he and a ruffian pal called Neckbone (Jacob Lofland) head to a river island on which Neckbone has spotted a boat in a tree, evidently thrown up there by a storm. It turns out there's a man living there, and his name is Mud.
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