Review of You Can Count on Me (2000) by Jerry W — 26 Mar 2006

[b]You Can Count On Me[/b], Lonergan[indent]Laura Linney and Mark Ruffalo take writer/director Mark Lonergan's screenplay and give two knock out performances. If I weren't so distrustful of superlatives (because ubiquitous and unqualified hyperbole has made the extraordinary indistinguishable from the ordinary), I would say this is one of the most moving movies I've seen. But I won't say that. No. Not gonna happen.

What I will say is that this story of a sister (Linney) and brother (Ruffalo), orphaned early in life, is a beautiful accomplishment. Lacking parents, these two slip into opposing/complimentary roles to deal with the loss. She grows up and stays in the family's small town in NY. She is home. He becomes a wanderer, the non-home. The movie is a study in this sort of contrast. But it's not self-consciously so: you only gently become aware of it. The only contrast that comes close to being overt is in the score which alternates between an expressive cello playing variations on a theme and country pop and folk music.

But just as soon as the roles become established, she as a model of stability and he of instability, the roles break down. She has an affair and he becomes a father figure (in his pot smoking, pool playing way). Most of the the thematic work the movie does concerns doubt about our place in the world, whether we are meant to wander and find our way or instead to continue the traditions of those who came before us. The characters don't find answers to these existential questions (if they did, the movie would be worse for it). Watching them search is an experience you can count on to be sad and sweet; the movie is the most moving when the sweet things are sad and when the sad things are sweet.

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