Mud

If you are going to write a great American coming-of-age story, there is no better place to start than with The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.  The recent DVD release of this spring’s indie-film hit Mud is straight out of the Mark Twain classic.  (Indeed, a minor character bears the name Tom Blankenship, the same name as the real-life inspiration for Twain’s Finn.)

Mud begins on the River – not the Mississippi but a backwater tributary in southeastern Arkansas.  Fourteen year old Ellis and his younger friend Neckbone are river rats whose outboard skiff is a worthy substitute for Huck’s raft.  They are on an adventure to a river island in search of a legendary cabin cruiser lodged high in a tree, hoping to plunder its booty.  Instead, they encounter Mud (Matthew McConaughey) – a mysterious stranger who is hiding out on the island.  Mud is on the run, seeking to be reunited with his estranged true love (Reese Witherspoon).  The boys are at an age where love and obsessive infatuation are indistinguishable, and Mud’s romantic conviction is their anchor amid the swirling eddies of failed marriages and abusive relationships around them. Whether Mud is a victim or a con man – Jim or the Duke – is the central mystery of the film. 

Writer-Director Jeff Nichols has created a richly textured film with a strong sense of place and outstanding performances all around.  He wisely uses the romantic story line as context for the real emotional core of the film: the painful negotiation of growing into manhood, exhibited in the competing characters of Mud and Ellis’s hardscrabble father “Senior” (Ray McKinnon).

There are theological subtexts in the movie, most notably in references to the story of Creation and Fall.  “Mud” may be a reference to Adam, the original mud-man.  He wears a cross of nails on the heel of his boots as a defense against Satan (and snakes are an ever-present danger on the island).  Nichols seems to want to represent the Fall in the power of the temptress over the male of the species, and redemption in the constancy of true love.  His theology is more folkloric than biblical, and is only partially counterbalanced by Ellis’s mother Mary Lee (Sarah Paulson) who pursues a kind of liberated womanhood.

Part Sling Blade and Stand by Me, and all Huckleberry Finn, Mud is one of the best coming-of-age films of the past decade, and a likely Oscar contender for acting (McConaughey), writing, and directing.  3.5/4.0 stars.