Mud is an odyssey through a young boy’s earliest loss of innocence. It’s about an adolescent’s first lesson in the grief that can follow love, the violence that can follow a hero, the murky gray that entirely encompasses a being from time to time, when a boat is simply just a boat.
Two teenage boys, Ellis (Tye Sheridan) and Neckbone (Jacob Lofland), come across a lone fugitive and decide to aid him in evading bounty hunters and to try and reunite him with his one true love.
The fugitive in question is Matthew McConaughey as titular character Mud in his most curiously enchanting role in years. In the last two years, he’s done a well-to-do job in reinventing his image from the last decade of the go-to rom-com guy and has turned in three strong and fascinating performances, but with Mud, he’s successfully managed to combine his effortless charm – as well as depth – in one singular character.
However, despite McConaughey’s natural screen presence, it’s director Jeff Nichols and young star Sheridan who steal the show and majorly impress. Jeff Nichols has created a world straight out of a folk tale, yet undoubtedly true and drawn from reality. The cinematography evokes a timeless magic of what truly skilled artists can create and the emotions that a singular scenic shot can stir. This is juxtaposed with the bare landscapes, the town that seemingly goes on forever, and the rural life the town folk are forced to endure whether or not it’s what they truly want.
Inspired by Mark Twain’s most popular tale, Jeff Nichols has penned a script that inhabits the meaning of adventure straight out of boyhood: there’s the mysterious stranger, the life lessons and the best friends, the life you leave behind and the mystery of a river.
Sheridan deserves the lion’s share of credit with managing to hold afloat the weighty story on his inexperienced shoulders. He manages to convince us of his pain and his doubt, and watching him either lose faith in a father figure or react with joy to a potential first love interest, he captures our heart the entire time. Like Quvenzhané Wallis last year of Beasts of the Southern Wild, Sheridan is a standout young performer who could go head-to-head with any of his contemporaries.
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The cast includes strong and reliable supporting members including Reese Witherspoon, Sarah Paulson, Sam Shepard and the Nichols’ staple: Michael Shannon.
This is a rare breed of film, especially at this point in the year. Like The Place Beyond the Pines (my now second favorite film this year), this film explores the nature of parentage and how fathers can change their sons’ lives but ultimately with a more hopeful outlook. In Mud, Ellis sees a father figure, a friend and a confidant, a mystery and an adventure. In Ellis, Mud sees a young man who he can influence, who he can mold and ultimately a young man who he can only hope will turn out better than him.
It’s a dynamic often explored but rarely with this caliber of quality.
Mud is a folk tale with long winding roads and dirt paths and forests that seem to encompass one’s entire world. Mud is a story of superheroes and the effects one fallen from grace can have on an admirer. Mud is about the perseverance or love and the necessity of letting it go. Mud is a story of fathers and sons. Mud tells us that it’s okay to love the bad guy, root for his survival, and it’s a coming of age lesson in how and why life doesn’t always work out in the way one would please.
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But sometimes life will surprise you and turn out more optimistic and more beautiful than you’d ever begin to hope for.
10/10
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