Mud

In 2008, on the recommendation of a friend, I saw a tiny, barely heralded movie called Shotgun Stories. Almost immediately I knew that it was something unique, one of the most accomplished and confident debut features since Brick. I took note of the filmmaker, Jeff Nichols, and looked forward to his next project.

He didn’t disappoint. That follow-up, Take Shelter, remains my favorite American film of the past 3 or 4 years. Balancing a poignant look at mental illness with a suspenseful story of an oncoming apocalypse, anchored by great lead performances and a sharp lens on the working class, few films match its ability to move and enthrall on such a personal scale.

With his latest feature, Mud, Nichols has cemented himself as a great filmmaker, one with growing ambitions and the skill to tackle them. Here he’s taken the elements of a coming-of-age story and a hard-boiled crime flick and molded them into something affecting, forceful, and very satisfying.

The film concerns Ellis (Tye Sheridan), a young teen living in a houseboat on the muddy waters of Arkansas. One day, he and his friend Neckbone (Jacob Lofland) come across a disheveled and mysterious man stranded on an island just off the Mississippi. The man, named simply Mud (Matthew McConaughey), convinces the boys to bring him back food and supplies, quickly sparking a friendship between them. What ensues is a stirring tale of family and friendship, first loves and lost loves, bounty hunters and crime lords, cottonmouths and Piggly Wigglys.

McConaughey is going to walk away with the best notices of his career, and deservedly so. Coming off strong performances in Bernie, Magic Mike, and Killer Joe, he has worked overtime to erase the memory of one too-many Kate Hudson comedies and shirtless stoner roles. A character like Mud requires an actor, who can convincingly take turns from being menacing and self-centered to fatherly and sympathetic (among numerous other qualities). Nichols has crafted a strong, 3-dimensional character in Mud, and it’s a testament to McConaughey that it becomes impossible to imagine anyone else in the role.

The big breakthrough performance in the movie is Sheridan, in one of the great child performances of the past decade. It’s always a risky endeavor to build a movie around a child – one step too precocious or mannered and the whole movie starts to sink with them. Sheridan thankfully gives a natural and layered performance; he not only holds the material, but helps elevate it, doing interesting work against McConaughey, Reese Witherspoon and other seasoned vets in the cast.

Mud feels like an active attempt by Nichols to expand the parameters of his universe. Like Shotgun Stories and Take Shelter, it feels like a fully considered, rich world with lots of unspoken history behind it; unlike those films, however, it dares to spend more time in those margins, drawing a wider array of supporting characters. Some of them, such as a retired military vet (a great turn by Sam Shepherd), come into play in interesting ways; others, such as Michael Shannon and Joe Don Baker, serve only to give the outer edges more color.

While this film may lack the sheer impact of Take Shelter, it nonetheless feels like a jump forward for Jeff Nichols, both as a screenwriter and a visual storyteller. It’s not just that he’s skilled at what he does, but that he has something even more intriguing: a voice. If this were the last film he ever made (dear God, I hope not), we would have a cohesive trilogy of work with shared influences, settings, actors, themes, and moral outlooks. Essentially, he’s standing today where Paul Thomas Anderson stood in 1999. If he’s even close to following that career trajectory, we’re in for a treat.