I went to see Lawless because I read Matt Bondurant’s historical novel The Wettest County in the World and thought it rich, well written, though problematic due to its shifting points of view. And because I’m about to begin teaching Appalachian Literature, a category the book sort of falls into, though the author is a a northeastern Virginia native with Franklin County roots (plus a set of brass knuckles on the family gun rack). As I was watching the story unfold, with all the close-up gore (including testicles in a Mason jar) I’d expect from a teen slasher film, I started wondering what I’d tell my students, if they went to see the film. So I tried to make two lists, good and bad, but they kept bleeding over into each other in an ugly way. (Bleeding is one reason the county is so wet — think The Road, The Proposition — same director.)
The music is generally effective, some of it period and regional, the rest written in imitation of the real thing. The particular sacred harp hymn they chose always stirs me, and some of the tunes written by Nick Cave and others have some good licks, but I keep wondering, Why not use only music from the period and place? Old time songs usually leave Cave in the shade.
The cinematography was indifferent, though the dwellings are well rendered — dreary, scabby, ill-lit, make-do. The glimpses of religion seem pretty authentic, and they’re wise not to tie their imagery to a specific sect. I only wish for more nuance than we get. After all, it’s got to be an interesting mountain church that allows a young girl to pick mandolin at a barn dance awash with stump whiskey. The juxtaposition of the African-American funeral and the barn dance was a nice touch, too.
The images of the moonshining “industry” are various and convey something of the ingenuity of these folks, who seem pretty doltish in most other matters, their code portrayed too simply to allow for the inconsistencies they display (a cripple boy’s murder is cause for community unity and action; a cousin’s brutal tar-and-feathering, not so much). And who does all that woodchopping to keep the distilling process going? And do these people ever eat, other than a feast at the end like an episode of Blue Bloods?
This film isn’t really about mountain culture, however, or even about moonshining. It’s about a family so enterprising (and almost indestructible in the manner of, as the author tells The New Yorker‘s Tad Friend, Rasputin) that too much isn’t quite enough — more, bigger, fancier, nastier. The elements of the culture (storytelling, for instance, or the impact of poverty on the non-shiners) are given a wink and a nod, then abandoned as the filmmakers follow Jack’s developing greed, pretension and panting wannabe posing. For the few minutes he was on the screen, I felt that city gangster Floyd Banner (Gary Oldman) was more interesting to the screenwriter (Cave) than the other characters, especially the women, both of whom (Jessica Chastain and Mia Wasikowski) seem capable of more than they’ve been given. But then, this is a movie about men’s men.
Two real serious problems:
1. the lack of development or depth in the characters (most obvious in comic book melodrama villain Charlie Rakes, played with slick zeal by Guy Pierce), a too-impressionable bantam of a boy, a laconic tough paterfamilias, an angel, a hooker (or hoofer) with a heart-a-gold, various elected corruptioneers, snickering city slickers, an angry and protective preacher/father.
People are so busy filling their stock costumes and mugging for the camera that we don’t see much of the work of survival in the mountains. A pig gets slaughtered and two roosters spar, horses cavort to reflect blossoming love between two human colts, but the business of running farms is conspicuously absent. And now I see where I’m going. Exactly how moonshining fits in with the culture’s other labors and its overall economy — that would help rescue the movie from some of the stereotyping. And do these dogs hunt?
2. The Pollyanna ending with no accountability: “we was rough and bloody, but when prohibition ended we scaled back our appetites and settled into the nicest neighbors you’d want” (to paraphrase). The history behind the pseudo-western (jalopies instead of stallions, guns galore, white hats and black) involves all the political maneuvering before and after the trials that accompanied this little war, not to mention an understanding of why tax on liquor, even before Prohibition, was different and spurred the coastal and city tuckahoes and the highland cohees into conflict and mutual-contempt. And why it’s so much more profitable to still your corn instead of trucking the shucked ears to market.
And by the way, in this movie, where’s all that damn corn coming from? All that invisible hoeing . . . .
But I guess I’m being a trifle foolish. Matt Bondurant wrote a book rich with cultural insight but also filled with just enough of the feuding and fussing and rough customers to bedazzle filmmakers who want to make a shoot-em-up, cut-em-up, bash-em-down hillbilly adrenalinefest. Unless you’re looking for cultural and personal insight or are averse to seeing monstrous assaults and superhuman recoveries while the principals try to suss out the main plot line Cave means for them to follow, Lawless won’t hurt you, but The Wettest County in the World has it beat, hands down. It might not hurt to rent Thunder Road from Netflix or their ilk before you go, just for comparison’s sake.
