MUD Review

MUD Review

By Darin Skaggs

     There is something about being a child that when we look back on it, it seems like a perfect, easier time.  That time though is not, it is when we are at our most vulnerable.  It is the time we are learning about life not knowing that the world is harsh, mean and difficult.  Jeff Nichols, who made the amazing 2011 film Take Shelter, directs a film all about this time in a kid’s life dealing with the loss of innocence with the hard reality setting in.

     Mud is a film that begins with two young boys, Ellis and Neckbone, heading up river to try and find a boat that presumably is stuck up in a tree.  They find it and also discover that someone is living in it.  That someone is Mud, played wonderfully by Mathew MaConaughey, who is a fugitive on the run trying to get to the person he loves.  The boys do their best to try to help him even when it gets more challenging for them.

     Much like last year’s Beast of the Southern Wild this film starts with a world that seems to come out of a child’s imagination, cars floating in the water or a boat in a tree, and slowly throughout the film goes into a cold reality.  Also much like Beast both of the kids are strong going through stuff they shouldn’t go through, but they pull through.  Ellis’ parents throughout the film are disconnected and they both explain to Ellis that they will probably separate.  Ellis cannot emotionally deal with this and in a desperate attempt to prove love exist tries to help Mud contact his girl.  He even pushes a grown man to make sure she is okay.  When that doesn’t go how he wants he tells a girl who is a few years older and that has been hanging out with him that he loves her.  She is freaked out and runs away.  Ellis needs to know love exist and fights for it the entire movie.  He does come to terms with reality by the end and lets go of what he needs to.

     He is a character that is growing up way too soon.  Ellis clings onto helping Mud, a character that is late on growing up.  Mud is on the run for murdering a man and cannot find the courage to talk to the women he loves.  Also he lives on a boat on an island with no people around.  They are almost polar opposites while Mud is hiding from his problems, Ellis faces them head on.  He fights two people who are being harmful to women, one being a grown man.    

     The children who play Ellis and Neckbone do great work, some of the better child performances in a while.  Michael Shannon, who is in Nichols other two films, plays Neckbone’s parental guardian and is great in the role.  He plays a man who gets all his belongings from the ground of the riverbed.  He is a wacky character that explains why Neckbone, well is named Neckbone and why he is the way he is.  All Neckbone wants from helping Mud is a pistol, while Ellis is looking for emotional satisfaction.  The film is full of great, well develop characters.

     The film is not quiet on par with Take Shelter, though few films are but Nichols film is quiet amazing.  It is an entertaining film about that life is not as simple as we think it was growing up.  Mud is one of the greatest films of the year and a real joy to watch.