By now you know the drill: Chris Corbe-Fellini watches films and then provides expert analysis. Today he looks at the new Matthew McConaughey film, “Mud”, which scored a 99% on the Rotten Tomatoes meter.

Mud

by Chris Corbellini

A woman’s desire to change and mold a bad boy into something else is well-covered territory. Novels, the occasional hit cable series, and a never-ending stream of magazines have all tried to tackle the catch that refuses to be caught. Far less discussed in those circles, if at all, is the role reversal: a caring man’s inability to hold onto an irresponsible, beautiful woman for very long. The movie “Mud” may be pitched at first as a story of star-crossed lovers and the two kids that offer to help them out, but at the finish this one is a cautionary tale about how a pretty face can be a man’s ruin. Or worse, someone who is still just a boy.

Consider the Beach Boys classic “Help Me Rhonda” that warbles playfully over the end credits. Perhaps not playfully. Mockingly might be a better fit. You see, the clam digger uncle of one of the boys, played by Michael Shannon, explains to young Ellis (Tye Sheridan) that the song is about the best way to cure a broken heart: a brand-new bit of female booty. The other boy, the nephew in question, Neckbone (Jacob Lofland), already agrees. When a jilted woman angrily leaves a family trailer she stops, pivots, and tells the seemingly-impressionable lad to “treat a woman like a princess,” but he is already past that point, staring giddily straight down her shirt.

Sheridan and Lofland share a “Stand By Me” moment

Not that Neckbone isn’t a good kid. Quite the contrary, like Ellis he’s handy, loyal, and flies under the radar of watchful adult eyes in a small, soggy Arkansas river town. The pair begin the film on an island looking for a boat wedged high atop a tree after a flood, find it (the vessel looks like one of those fake arrow toys you place on someone’s head) and claim it as their own. Alas, they then discover a squatter of sorts in a man named Mud. The camera first locates the title character (Matthew McConaughey) from a distance, seemingly appearing out of nothing. Indeed, moments before, the boys noticed that a track of footprints simply disappear in the sand. This would suggest McConaghey as a mysterious and perhaps sinister figure, but his motivations quickly become clear. Mud has been in love with a girl named Juniper (Reese Witherspoon) his entire life, things turned ugly with another guy, and now he is on the run. These two boys represent his best chance to get that boat back on the water and escape. A letter passed discreetly to Juniper would be a solid as well.

That’s enough set-up for a two-hour movie, and with a hollow-faced group of bounty hunters and a dead man’s family looking for Mud this film builds to a violent climax like rising floodwater. But this isn’t a straight-up thriller, it’s a coming-of-age tale, and the screenplay deftly weaves in Ellis’ first cannonball into women-infested waters. It’s not a pretty landing. Consider the ladies that circle his life:  His mother wants a divorce and there’s talk of their home on the river being dismantled (the father glumly states that love isn’t enough to keep it all together, it fades). An older love interest pushes him away and pulls him in. Then there’s sexy-sad Juniper, and a betrayal which I will not reveal. I will only say that Ellis and Neckbone have to experience it twice, once for themselves and again through Mud’s pleading eyes.

Reese is no June Carter Cash in this Southern Gothic flick.

It’s McConaughey’s best moment, and Witherspoon, Shannon, Sam Shepard and Sam Shepard’s rifle rise up to the quality of the script as well. Still, it’s the kids that carry us all from credits to credits. Sheridan and Lofland play 14-year-olds, and it’s the perfect age of know-how around machinery and naivete about people.  It’s easy for a teenage boy, when surrounded by so many things he cannot control, to go so far out of his way to help someone else. The pair are old enough to traverse the river by boat and ride a motorcycle, but not old enough to own a driver’s license. Old enough to stand up to a grown man beating on a girl, yet not old enough to physically stop him. The camerawork does get crafty when they need the leads to act older than their years, shooting up at them from near their waists. The scene where Ellis tries to convince Shepard’s character to help Mud was lensed this way. Yet when they are confronted by an adult with bad intentions they are all in frame from a normal eye level, and the size difference is drastic and frightening.

Did you really think that MM was going to keep his shirt on the entire film?

With movies like this it’s not about the teens they are at that moment, but the men they will someday become. The final shots of open water and a stolen smile from a girl across the street offer an upbeat ending, but what a boat ride to get to that point for all involved. In one of his two key moments in a hotel room with Juniper, Ellis steps outside and … and … and he can’t help himself, he must walk back to see a beautiful woman’s reaction to one more letter. Would she be stone-faced, watching a TV? Or maybe on the phone flirting with the next of many interested parties? What happens next, and a few final words from Mud before it all goes down in a hail of gunfire, likely set Ellis’ path of relationships more than anything else. If the filmmakers decided to revisit he and Neckbone 20 years later, no doubt they would be happy and successful working together on the water. As the sun finally dipped into the river they would part walking toward their vehicles, one with an uncle tagging along to a singles bar, and the other into the arms of a loving, stable wife.

(Editor’s Note: Tennessee native Witherspoon seems on a mission to tackle every SEC state that she can in her career. It began in 1991 with “The Man on The Moon” [Louisiana] and continued in 2002 with “Sweet Home Alabama”  and then her home state in 2005’s “Walk The Line.” Witherspoon was born in Sportsman’s Paradise but was raised in Nashville.)