Every time I hear the phrase, “It’s a coming of age story”, I start to feel slightly sick. I realise that this is unfair since there are numerous very charming and meaningful coming of age stories indeed. And yet, somehow that phrase, having been terribly overused, now comes to mean, at least in my mind, a slightly trite tale of some poor pre-adolescent boy or girl getting a rude awakening.
Happily, this is not so with Mud. While the film does indeed deal quite a bit with the tribulations of a 14-year-old boy called Ellis (Tye Sheridan) leaving behind his childhood and settling firmly into the terrible, heartbreaking teens, there are also quite a few other subtle and heart-tugging angles.
The eponymous character is played by Matthew McConaughey, an actor who in the last few years has miraculously turned his acting career around, going from indulging in shallow action hero type roles where he is usually ridiculously fake-tanned, to nuanced, weighty roles in films like The Lincoln Lawyer (2011), The Paperboy (2012), and Magic Mike (2012). Who would have thought that former bad boy McConaughey had such hidden depths, and yet, in all of these aforementioned films he has proven himself again and again to be a very fine actor indeed.
Mud would not be the film it is without McConaughey, and yet, it is far from a star vehicle. Instead, the script, which was also written by the director, Jeff Nichols, firmly centres around a fine ensemble cast, with little known but finely honed actors playing Ellis’s father Senior (Ray McKinnon), Michael Shannon is Galen, the pearl diving uncle of Ellis’s friend Neckbone (Jacob Lofland), and then we also have the great, understated Sam Shephard as Tom Blankenship, an enigmatic loner who is also a crack sharpshooter.
This kind of array is essential in a story like Mud, which switches from adventure to romance to family drama. When Ellis and Neckbone set off in their boat to explore an island off the grand Mississippi River, we think we are suddenly in the middle of a Mark Twain novel, albeit slightly more modern. The boys have heard of a boat that is stuck up in a tree, courtesy of the last great flood in the Arkansas area. They find the boat, but they also find Mud, who quickly befriends them with his tall tales and romantic back-story.
He has killed a man for the love of a girl called Juniper (Reese Witherspoon), he claims. He also claims that he is waiting for her to join him and that he plans to sail away with her on that boat which is up in that tree. As the boys get drawn into Mud’s life and his seemingly tall tales start to ring true, all hell breaks loose, there are snakebites, gun fights, broken hearts, and some unsolved mysteries. And through all this, the geography of the old South, now fading fast, plays a key role.
Some films have a charm that is hard to pinpoint. Mud is not a classic. Perhaps in a few years it will be forgotten. But, for the time being, it is one of the most decent and well made films I’ve seen in a while.
Mud has its heart in the right place. It is firmly a film for the family, you won’t have to cover your teenager’s ears, and if ever there was a more decent boy than Ellis in recent cinema, I’d like for someone to come forward and make it known.
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