Review of Get Low (2010) by Shiira — 15 Sep 2010

"Get Low" isn't the first time that Robert Duvall has played a hermit. There was "Sling Blade", of course, with Duvall playing a cuckolded husband who suddenly became a widower after his retarded son used a sling blade, "some call it a kaiser blade", on his incontinent wife, Karl Childers' mother, half a lifetime ago, and transmuted into a lonely, old geezer; a recluse, waiting to die.

Duvall also played the hermit as a young man in Joseph Anthony's rarely-seen "Tomorrow"(based on a rarely anthologized William Faulkner short story from a novel of linked stories called "Knight's Gambit"), a hermit named Jackson Fentry, a cotton farmer whose monosyllabilism and maladroit consuetude toward the enceinted woman he courts, then weds, is unrelenting from start to finish.

Duvall never betrays Jackson's history of societal isolation by being normal; the pre-"Godfather", that is to say, the pre-iconic actor never breaks character for the sake of a more accessible film.

Reported to be the septuagenarian artist's favorite role, Jackson Fentry lingers in his aloof state because "Tomorrow" is steadfastly realistic about human nature; it knows that people don't change their stripes overnight, like in the movies, like in "Get Low".

Felix Bush, Duvall's latest hermit, to be sure, is an eccentric, but he doesn't exhibit the tell-tale signs of a man in exile; he's too congenial, too chatty, attributes not at all in alignment with a penitent man, a tortured man who castigated himself for the great fire that consumed the great love of his life, when he interacts with the townsfolk(some of whom he'd been out of touch with for over forty years) with the same ease and familiarity as his horse.

A carpenter by trade, Felix had erected a grand cathedral of wood with his own bare hands; a church that's still standing, a black church(echoing Faulkner's "The Sound and the Fury", "Light in August", among others) presided over by the same black minister, Charlie Jackson(Bill Cobbs), who asks his old friend if he made peace with God.

No, he hasn't. That's the reason behind Felix's disappearing act, the conversation with his maker which never transpired, hence, the unremitting cold shoulder he imparted to everybody in both heaven and earth, including himself.

In "Tomorrow", Duvall managed to adumbrate his natural born charisma just so, in order to make Jackson Fentry lovable in his unlovableness. The cotton farmer is taciturn, to say the least. That's not the case here.

Duvall's performance is calibrated to entertain you, not pain you; his wintry flirtation with Mattie(Sissy Spacek) and camaraderie with the guys back at the funeral home(Bill Murray and Lucas Black), despite being sturdily acted by all parties concerned, strikes a false note.

"Get Low" extemporaneously accentuates this bum note when Frank Quinn(Murray, in his most dramatic role since "The Razor's Edge") is dumbfounded by how articulate his client can be(regarding the money that people send in for Felix's funeral party), curiously so, unlike Jackson Fentry(who provided the template for Karl Childers in Billy Bob Thornton's directorial debut), a maladjusted hick, perhaps, suffering from some degree of mental retardation himself, who wouldn't have gotten a word in edgewise with the slick funeral home director.

Felix seems too amiable, and that's why "Get Low" fails on some level, an Aristotelian one, since Duvall is just being Duvall, hamming it up, instead of imitating the lost soul that Felix pertains to be.