Review of Undertow (1949) by Darryl J — 15 Sep 2008

Official David Gordon Green fanboy here.

This is not one of his more liked films but I was mesmerized from the start. From the beyond beautiful cinematography to his stylistic directing. I'm a lover of freeze frames.

While watching this,I was reminded of a classic movie called "Night of The Hunter". That was a great film with some less than stellar acting but great nonetheless. This has some of the themes of that. Actually,a lot of themes. They both deal with siblings running away from insane/greedy men. They're also both grim fairy tales. Robert Mitchum=Josh Lucas. I liked this one a lot better mostly because of the superior acting and I love Green's visual style. He,of course, takes cues from Malick but I doubt Malick cares since he produced this film. They both deal with people remembering events. We are never watching what's happening but what already happened. The characters were well written and instantly likable. The music is really strange. You would hear a song and it would transform into a song you heard earlier then mold itself into the earlier song making this really strange sound that was super effective. The last scene is one of the most haunting endings I've seen. David Gordon Green has crafted another one of my favorite films. He's in my top 10 directors of all time.