By: Marion DS Dreyfus
Fair disclosure: We were so jazzed by being inside a theatre—even masked, urgh—that our reactions to the film were notched up a tier or two after more than a year by sitting inside a movie emporium.
Given the state of the world, and the disarray of the country we live in, it was of course releasing a backpack of frets and deeper concerns to sit amongst movie lovers again. Strangely, though the weather was good, and it was a Saturday night—traditionally, for many, a movie night–the space held about 25 people in a 200-seat viewing hall.
There is much to mull over in the Tom McCarthy-directed ‘thriller,’ though it covers too much realistic emotional ground to be fairly classified as such. There are also, to be honest, some script glitches that had audiences exiting asking each other “…but what about…?”
Above all else, to me and my companion, “Stillwater” proved a subversive film. The protagonist is a proud American, a faith-based quietly self-confident, loving father, a Constitutionalist — a man not easily put off by adversity or negative opinion.
In Hollyweird, such a film is as rare as 40-carat diamonds just lying around a mine opening in Botswana. His dedication to his ‘mission’ of daughter-rescue brooks no barrier.
“Stillwater” is a compelling question-provoking feature, anchored by a stolid, taciturn Oklahoman played by Matt Damon in a role that demands more interior work and audience empathy than his usual offerings. Curious about the title, we did some research. Stillwater is a real place in Oklahoma, its 9th biggest city, with a population just a hair under 50,000 people. It’s classed as a ”nice” place to live (MONEY mag review of the ‘100 best places to live,’ 2010). It has nationally recognized basketball and football teams.
Bill Baker (Damon) is in construction, but totes a messy background, roughnecking, jailtime–and a daughter doing time in Marseille he visits as he tries to re-connect with her. Abigail Breslin, a non-cosmetized casting choice, doesn’t pretty-up her ungenial character, that of a go-her-own-way independent collegian accused of a crime reminiscent of Amanda Knox some years ago.
The costume department does her a major disservice by muddying her teeth, as if she’d eaten two liters of stewed blueberries during most of the film, and you can’t take your eyes off these horrible purplish stumpy things in her mouth. Nobody would hire a real actress with such teeth, so you know it’s makeup or something diabolical; we suppose it is to symbolize her ill treatment, or something, in the institution in which she is now encased.
Whatever. (It does not work, guys.)
Though Breslin has been ‘inside’ for 5 years, she seems to have a wardrobe that’s a step up from the usual prison garb, another error on the part of the behind-the-camera crew. Her references to her earnest father, a clear Southern Christian, who says Grace before meals and frankly typifies most of the great good people in the US, at several points defends himself—he’s built like a brickhouse here, tats on his arm and muscles everywhere, as befits a guy in oil extraction and construction—and acknowledges to the Frenchies he meets that “of course” he has a gun–two, in fact. “Why wouldn’t I?”
Typical reaction: “Ooh, these American cowboys…!”
Baker tasks himself with finding a key creep who might offer his angry daughter, Allison [Breslin with the horrible teeth] an early out of her yellow-painted Marseille prison.
In showing the unusual venue, Marseille, the film also shows us the favela-like ramshackle rough-trade coast town now brimming with scurvy North African ‘migrants’ of a not-particularly meticulous sort, petty criminals and uncouth troublemakers.
Parlaying the distinctions between American pragmatic culture, as exemplified by the mostly monosyllabic Damon/Bill, and the French culture today, thieves, drug sellers and soccer fans amongst the typos shown, much of the film is in French, subtitled–and slang at that– along with a giant slab of eye-opening contrast to the ‘superiority’ of the American foreigner abroad.
At one point, for telling instance, two locals titter and finally challenge, in English, “Did you vote for him?” “Who?” Baker replies. “Trump…!” they ask, ready, one assumes, to mock him or something akin. But he doesn’t take the bait. He didn’t vote, for reasons he explains to them.
Small moments throughout the film lead one to think this is a slightly subversive script not out of the Hyannis Port and Hollywood mimeo machine. And welcome to all its digs and insights, frankly. One of the rare films not to set our teeth on edge with its leftist pieties flaring.
We grow to trust and like Baker, despite Allison’s clear sneering disregard. He seems a man after the pattern of Clint. Wayne and Shane. Capable, taking it all in, undaunted by negative circumstances or the odds.
The story does not take obvious turns, and Baker’s extended time in France, with a credible sharing of a flat with a winning moppet, Maya, played unaffectedly and beguilingly by sloe-eyed knockout Lilou Siauvaud and her single mother, played by acclaimed French actor Camille Cottin, as stage performer—but, like Maya and Allison, unfancy–Virginie, held our interest for its realism and avoidance of fake emotion or obvious insta-romance.
At 2 hours and 20 minutes, it’s not the shortest movie around. But when it ended, I wanted more. That’s why the proverb “Still waters run deep” [coined by ancient Quintus Rufus Curtius, writing of Alexander the Great] might apply to this “Stillwater.”
