Shotgun Stories

On a tip from Brian from Gone Elsewhere, I rented Shotgun Stories, an independent film that was shot in 2004 but got an extremely limited release earlier this year. It was written and directed by Jeff Nichols and set in his home state of Arkansas. The story, which pits two sets of half-brothers against each other, is reminiscent of the work of Sam Shepard with a hint of Romeo and Juliet (without the romantic angle).

The paterfamilias of the story is never seen--he dies off-screen in the opening moments of the film. He has had two families. He mistreated and abandoned the first, even giving them nondescript names of Son, Kid and Boy. After giving up booze and finding Christ, he remarried and had four more boys, who got proper names.

The three boys from the first family are a motley crew of severe underachievers. Son, the oldest, is the responsible one, married with a son, working at a fish farm for twenty grand a year. Kid, though employed, sleeps in a pup tent in Son's yard, and Boy, who seems to have no other business but coaching boy's basketball, lives in a van, which he says beats paying rent. When we first meet Son, his wife has left him for his gambling, and we also see that he has a constellation of scars on his back, likely coming from shotgun spray.

At the funeral of the father, the first group of boys makes an uninvited visit and Son condemns his old man. This sets in motion the wheels of Aristotlean tragedy, as a Hatfield and McCoy-like feud develops. Though the pacing is languid and the behavior of the characters is measured, there is a pall of menace that hangs over the proceedings, and it isn't a shock when a few of the characters end up dead. It's how the feud comes to a resolution that Shotgun Stories provides some surprises.

The only recognizable actor is Michael Shannon, as Son. I've been intense work from him in Bug and Before the Devil Knows You're Dead. Here he is like a laconic cowboy, a bit like Gary Cooper in High Noon, who wants to protect his family but realizes he can't let certain things go. In fact, all three of the older brothers are so laid-back that at times I wondered if they fully realized what was going on. I recognize that this may just be an attribute of how men in southeast Arkansas behave, but there were times I wanted to see some displays of emotion.

Nichols has a great way of letting scenes unfold and has written some great dialogue. Kid and Boy seem to spend their time discussing basketball, and I loved a scene in which Kid asks Boy what is the best performance by a basketball player in a movie not about sports. Boy answers Wilt Chamberlain in Conan the Destroyer. I might go with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in Airplane, but I'll have to think more on the subject.