Thoughts On Film Stillwater

Me:

Watched Stillwater, long, engrossing, with a superb Matt Damon. It’s a real film, solid, serious, intelligent, mature, such a contrast with the crap out these days that Scorsese rightly baffed. I don’t care if it’s at odds with Amanda Knox’s story. It has its own truth that runs deep.

L:

Okay, I was getting ready to not like it. Fine acting by Matt Damon, you're right, but found the character too much of a dumb ass, as he calls himself. Also irked by what seemed like the requisite "deplorable" references -- rednecks, racists, xenophobes, and of course Trump voters. But then the second half kicked in, the dancing scene with Sammi Smith playing in the background, and I warmed to it. But then of course his ability to fuck things up reappears. I ended up mixed, though the final scene in Marseilles was pretty moving. The thing is, I get that he's damaged, as is his daughter, as she says, but  that doesn't seem enough to hang this sort of story on, is my general impression. But I agree that it's a whole order of magnitude above the usual comic-book retread. 

Me:



Good points all, even as I differ some (as law and custom insist I do.)

Knowing that in his person Damon is an entrenched D, in the Obama/Hillary Clinton mode, I had a preconception that that would inform his characterization of his character.

 But that melted away. A bad fuck up he was, but there is an underlying admirable stubborn strength to him and an admiration for his down to earth usefulness as when he fixes things in Virginie’s apartment and in the basement building and on the job in Marseilles as down to earth as that is. It gets him to functioning adequately in Marseilles, truck and all.

Those virtues especially shine in contrast to the theatre director and in what is effectively Virginie’s choice of Baker over the director. 

His first 1/2 goodness and practical virtue are also apparent from the jump when he helps Maya get the key to her apartment. His practical virtue shows too in the cultural and values differences between him and Virginie, for example in owning guns, where he doesn’t come out the loser or the worse for what he values. 

As well he channels and embodies the down to earth power, integrity and depth of the best of  country music. 

So for me, all that and much more—I could go on—melted away my preconception of slagging a deplorable. 

I guess two of my criticisms are:

basically the film goes on too long, which in some ways is a function of the two stories—exonerating his daughter; his new life with Virginie and Maya—not being more tightly interrelated so that I got the feeling at times I was watching two different movies; and 

keeping the murderer in the basement while waiting for the DNA test seems somewhat preposterous to me, more an inorganic plot device to unify the stories and and themes than something he’d do or not realize he didn’t need to do.

That said, I like the moral ambiguity pervading the film and his ability to accommodate it in his daughter and I love the inexorable sadness of the ending, how flat and changed for the worse Oklahoma seems to him after he loses what he had with Virginie and Maya.

You may not recall this but we disagreed about a previous film by this director, Three Billboards Out Of Ebbing Missouri, but with shoes more or less on different feet. I took quite sharp exception to it and you liked it a lot.

L:

I didn't realize this was by the same director as the "Three Billboards" movie -- and alas I can't even remember my own reaction to that, nor yours. But in this case, your take seems more in line with critical and popular opinion, judging by Rotten Tomatoes at least. And you make enough good points about the positive aspects of the movie that it makes me think I should give it another look. But your criticisms are well put too, and I agree with both, so I wind up mixed, as I was. I should look up that director though.