Jeff Nichols (2007)
Jeff Nichols’s first feature is, like Mud, set in Arkansas, where Nichols was born and brought up. In the opening shots and sequences, he and his DoP, Adam Stone, establish the geography and social context of Shotgun Stories with economy and clarity. The main characters work the land or in a fish factory in a nearby town. The plot centres on a feud within the extended Hayes family – a feud re-animated by the death of the father of two sets of half-brothers. The film’s score, by the country-punk band Lucero (whose members include Jeff Nichols’s brother, Ben) and the indie-rock group Pyramid, helps both to localise the piece and to convey foreboding. The elder Hayes offspring – Son (Michael Shannon), Boy (Douglas Ligon) and Kid (Barlow Jacobs) – have been taught by their resentful mother (Natalie Canerday) to hate the father who walked out on them. Her sons hate her too: a large part of their enmity towards their father and half-brothers is down to being left to be raised single-handed by a woman both bitter and callous. The trio turns up at the father’s funeral just in time for Son, the eldest son, to articulate their loathing of the dead man and to spit on his coffin. There’s a graveside punch-up with their half-siblings. In the aftermath to the funeral (I wasn’t clear as to the exact timeframe), the bad blood develops new, and what threatens to become inexorably lethal, force.
Some aspects of Jeff Nichols’s screenplay are very convincing. Boy’s dog dies and Kid learns that it was fatally poisoned by a snake placed in the animal’s water bowl by Mark Hayes (Travis Smith), the eldest of the younger half-brothers. Kid’s reaction makes good psychological sense. The feud doesn’t dominate his life to the extent that he already suspected Mark. When he finds out, from a third party, what happened, Kid isn’t seized by crazy fury yet he’s impelled, without a moment’s hesitation, to avenge the killing of the dog, and he kills Mark. The mother’s two-pronged sustenance of her sons’ anger is succinctly expressed in a scene in which Son goes to tell her that Kid has died, at the hands of two of the other half-brothers, John (David Rhodes) and Stephen (Lynnsee Provence). Although Son takes his mother to task here for being the source of the feud, his clear awareness of her influence doesn’t modify his own aggression towards the younger Hayes sons. What’s less convincing is that the behaviour of the father’s second family, who are meant to have had a relatively stable upbringing, is so similarly governed by the feud. Putting the snake in the water bowl is believable as something that Stephen, the most volatile of the younger sons, might have done as a reaction to what happened at his father’s funeral. It’s harder to credit that Mark Hayes would have acted in this way – and it’s this act which is the catalyst for much of what follows. The chain reaction of vengeance in Shotgun Stories comes across as a rather too abstract working out of Jeff Nichols’s central theme.
This might be less of a problem if the characterisations were sharper than they mostly are. Nichols made Shotgun Stories on a small budget: the cast includes several non-professionals and some of the acting is not so much low-key naturalistic as weak (although it’s not always the less experienced actors who are the problem). The sons of the second family, except for Stephen, aren’t individual enough; Glenda Pannell, as Son’s wife Annie, although she has a few effective moments, is uneven; and G Alan Wilkins, as Shampoo Douglas, is conspicuously weak in what is a crucial role. In an interview with Filmmaker magazine in March 2008, Nichols was quoted as saying that he ‘didn’t sit down and plan out for Shampoo to be a Greek chorus necessarily’. In fact, Shampoo calls to mind not the chorus of classical tragedy but the supporting character whose revelations, either intentionally or inadvertently, drive the protagonists to fateful action: Shampoo spills the beans not only to Kid about the snake but also to Son about the involvement of John and Stephen in the death of Kid.
Son Hayes is, however, a compelling and persuasive character – well written and very well played by Michael Shannon (who has gone on to appear in all Jeff Nichols’s features to date). At the start of the film, Annie has walked out on Son, taking their young son Carter (Cole Hendrixson) with her. She’s exasperated by her husband’s gambling losses, which the family can ill afford. Annie and Carter return to Son shortly after his father’s funeral although Son continues to gamble, convinced there’s a system to winning that he’s on the verge of cracking. He explains this conviction calmly: it’s a particular strength of Michael Shannon’s performance that he balances with an impression of reasonableness the irrational force of Son’s drives and the pervasive obstruction of his and his brothers’ hang-ups. He talks to Boy simply and honestly about his love for Annie. Kid is sweet on a girl called Cheryl (Coley Campany); shortly before Kid’s death, Son has assured his brother that his future with Cheryl will work out fine.
We see in the opening scene that Son has scars on his back. We learn later on, from Boy, that these are from shotgun wounds, received when Son was protecting his younger brothers. The circumstances in which this occurred aren’t explained (here too, perhaps, Nichols prefers to present the long-running feud in quasi-mythic terms) – but Michael Shannon embodies a latent ability, even propensity, to fight his corner and this helps you believe what Boy says about the scars. In a showdown with John, Stephen and their elder brother Cleaman (Michael Abbott Jr), Son sustains a serious head injury. He is lying unconscious in a hospital bed when the other surviving half-siblings agree to bury the hatchet, although Stephen expresses doubts as to whether Son, if he recovers, will agree to keep the peace. In the final sequence of Shotgun Stories, the convalescent Son sits on the porch of his and Annie’s house with Boy and Carter. Son looks relaxed – he sits back and stretches his legs. It’s a peaceful image; maybe the violence that’s gone before has achieved catharsis. But Michael Shannon has made such a quietly unnerving personality of Son that you wouldn’t put money on it.
31 May 2015
