The coming-of-age story is one of my favorite movie genres, and few movies about boys turning into men are as painfully moving and significant as Mud, starring Matthew McConaughey. Like every great story in this genre, the movie shows the painful transition boys must make to graduate into full adult manhood. This transition had ceremonies and rites of passage once upon a time, but in modern America, the transition is often marked by tragedy and disappointment.
The story revolved around two friends who meet a mysterious stranger. Ellis and his friend Neckbone are two Arkansas river kids, barely teenagers, and they often take Ellis’s john boat out onto the Mississippi River, where they are not supposed to be. They are good boys, but they’ve grown up on the river and they are starting to take chances.
At home, the boys see mostly poverty and adults barely scraping by. Ellis’s mother and father are fighting, and their marriage is clearly reaching an end, which will mean Ellis will have to move away from the river home he’s known all his life. His father is a good man, but the dad has been broken by his inability to form a stable marriage or save the house. the house, it seems, is n the mother’s name and if she wants to leave, they must go.
On an island out in the river Ellis and Neckbone discover an old boat that is stuck in a tree, placed there by a storm years ago. The old boat is a regular place to hang out, but one day, they see that someone has started living in it. Down by the beach, they discover who; it is a full-grown man with torn clothes and unkept hair. The man tells the boys his name is Mud. Mud reveals that he is hiding on the island and is a fugitive from the law. He killed a man in Texas, he explains, because that man was beating the women he loves, a siren with bird tattoos on her hands named Juniper.
The boys are drawn in by Mud’s spell. He’s wild, living on an island in a boat way up in a tree, and he’s on the run because of true love. When Mud asks for help, they readily provide it. They bring him food, but also, they contact an older man whom Mud describes as a father figure to him, Tom Blankenship. Tom is an old veteran who lives alone and knows Mud well. He visits Mud on the island and when he finds out Mud is in trouble again because a Juniper, a girl Mud has chased all his life, he is angry, and refuses to help. Mud must rely only on the boys.
Mud conveys his plan; he is going to get the boat out of the trees, fix it, and run away down the river with Juniper. The boys find Juniper and convey the plan, she agrees to go along, but the boys also discover that the killers from Texas have tracked her down, and they are watching her, waiting for Mud to appear so they can kill him. The boys also see firsthand that Juniper is beautiful, but she’s a broken, manipulative girl who brings trouble to herself, and that brings trouble to Mud. Tom Blankenship is right; chasing that girl will get Mud killed and his devotion to her has blighted his life. Again, Ellis sees the pain love brings in his dad’s life, to Mud’s life, and he is disappointed further in the girl he shows interest in at his school. Everywhere he looks, he sees men pained by the actions of women. When Juniper goes to a bar and flints with other guys on the day she is to flee with Mud, Ellis and Neckbone see first hand her treachery, and to make matters worse, Mud accepts it and send another note to her that their relationship is over. Ellis sees true love die.
Ellis and Neckbone come of age the way all boys come of age these days; through pain and disappointment that leads to maturity and sacrifice. Along that path is often intense anger, and hopefully, the boy in question survives it. In the film Ellis grows progressively angrier, and he eventually confronts Mud. He calls Mud a fool and a fake, and berates him for convincing the boys that there was both magic and love in the world. The stark truth of disappointment all around consumes him.
He runs away from Mud, but falls into a pit of snakes. Mud surrenders his own plans and acts to save Ellis’s life. He takes Ellis to a hospital in town, but his presence tips off the killers from Texas and he is tracked to Ellis’s home. The killer descend on the river house and there is a massive shoot out. Only because old Tom Blankenship, the veteran sharpshooter, lives across the river, does Mud barely survive. Tom, the only father Mud has ever known, saves him.
In the end, Mud disappears from Ellis’s lie as quickly as he appeared, and the events that were in motion as the film started carry through. There are no miracles and perfectly happy endings in any realistic coming of age tale. Coming of age means accepting what will happen even if the outcome is hated and feared. Once day, you just must grow up. Ellis and his dad move into an apartment, and Ellis must finish school and move on.
Mud, however, does show again, free of Juniper, and floating down river with Tom Blankenship. There seems to be hope that Mud, too, will finally come of age, leave his ideas of magic behind, and find a stable place in the sun.
The cast in this film is excellent.
Tye Sheridan plays Ellis, and he presents a tragic face that is perfectly attuned to his situation. He is this generation’s Lucas Black, a hardscrabble boy with pain written all over his face.
Sam Shepard plays Tom Blankenship, and this role was one of Sheppard’s last performances. Sam Shepard was a playwright of tremendous significance and a first-rate actor for decades. His presence in the film is critical, he provides a window into Mud’s past and a portrait of mature manhood. When it counts, old Tom can be counted on to be there, and do the hardest of things.
Reese Witherspoon is Juniper, and her presence perfectly captures the qualities that Mud sees in her. Witherspoon’s narrow frame and gaunt face capture the worn look of the white trash woman, and her long gazes show that she knows what she’s been doing to men all her life but doesn’t care enough to stop.
Matthew McConaughey is Mud, and he shows here, as he has in some many roles, why he is a unique and compelling figure in American cinema. Like Jack Nicholson before him, McConaughey is a different character in every film and yet, always himself. His way of speaking is pure McConaughey and as in Mud, he finds every niche that McConaughey occupies in his public persona. He’s a little bit magic, a little redneck, a little bit philosopher, and a little bit action hero. Mud’s back story, as told by ol’ Tom Blankenship, is mythical, as are Mud’s claim to have various magic practices to ward off evil. Everyone claims he’s a liar, but if he is, he’s still aiming at a higher truth, which he is able to pass along to Eliot in time. Mud is a shaman, and at the end of the film, we are left to hope that he, too, comes of age and finds a place of truth in the world.
TomRoushOnline 