Robert Duvall has been making movies–a solid majority of good ones, a large handful of great ones–since the dawn of history, or so it seems. He won an Oscar in 1983 for "Tender Mercies," and may have a good shot at another for "Get Low," his latest, which opens today and again displays him as an outsider in a closed society, like Boo Radley or Mac Sledge, or even Tom Hagen.
This time he's Felix Bush, and in a year with the arrival of "back-country chic" as defined by "Winter's Bone," we're in Tennessee and Bush is a bearded recluse who barely speaks, greets visitors with a loaded gun and travels to town in a wagon. Of course there's a great tragedy in his background.
The screenplay, by Chris Provenzano and C. Gaby Mitchell, is based on a kernel of truth, a Tennessee man who held a funeral party for himself while he was still alive. First-time director Aaron Schneider does excellent work with the material and has surrounded Duvall with a fine supporting cast including Bill Murray as a sleazy funeral director; Sissy Spacek, 30 years since playing Loretta Lynn but properly mature and aging gracefully; Lucas Black as Murray's assistant and salesman; and Bill Cobbs as a pastor and apparently the only man Duvall trusts.
All are excellent.
Duvall, as stubborn as he is ornery, knows that he has no friends in town, also knows that parents use him as a terrible threat to frighten their children. But he is so tightly wrapped in the bonds of his own past he can do nothing until he is shocked into the present with a report that he is ill and has only a limited time to live. Tempted by something he read, he decides on a party while he is alive and tells the local undertaker (Murray) to arrange it. Felix insists on inviting the whole town and taking newspaper ads to bring others. The admission price will be to stand up and tell a story about Felix Bush.
And then Mattie shows up, back from California after being widowed. This shocks Felix even more, because he loved Mattie's sister, maybe a half-century earlier. Watching the splendid performances of Duvall, Spacek and Murray wraps the viewer into the story, and it is a fascinating tale.
Opens today at the Plaza Frontenac
–Joe