This film boasts one of the most complex scripts (by writer/director Kenneth Lonergan) about sibling relationships in a long while...since probably William McNamara's Radio Inside. It is so subtle that one might think that nothing is happening. But from the moment Terry (Mark Ruffalo) shows up in Scottsville, the status quo is disrupted. Not altered. Not irreparably affected or changed. Disrupted. One of the strengths of the movie is that since Ruffalo is a catalyst, once he leaves things might return to more or less the same. Except with his family.
Sammy (Laura Linney) is a loan officer at her local bank, dealing with a laconic 8 year old son, Rudy (Rory Culkin), and a new boss (Matthew Broderick), a man whose tactless approach someone mistook for managerial skill. When her brother Terry writes to tell her he is coming for a visit, she's ecstatic. Terry, however, has an ulterior motive. The film becomes about the relationship between two people who desperately need each other but don't know how to be there in the way the other really needs.
Laura Linney is very good here. She gives Sammy a steely resolve, shown to great effect in scenes with Matthew Broderick's Brian. Sammy is a woman who really wants to be a good person and wants to raise her son right, but says that "she just wants to be neutral." Linney knows that the key to Sammy is that one line she utters to Jon Tenney's Bob. Sammy is a good person and she cares, but she is completely unwilling to really make a mistake. She is scared and regarding Rudy she just doesn't have much of an opinion. Once Terry arrives we see a reserved Sammy degenerate over the course of the film into a more reckless (albeit in a mannered way) woman who really takes some chances. She's searching and Terry facilitates that search in ways Sammy never thought of. It is a nuanced performance that really clicks in the last scene of the movie with Terry.
Mark Ruffalo's Terry is a grown child. He wants to be a better man but he is caught up in this childish pessimistic self-involved shell where he knows the world doesn't owe him anything so in turn he doesn't owe it anything either. Ruffalo plays Terry with an interesting mixture of rugged charm and overwhelming vulnerability. Terry gets into fist fights and goes to pool halls to hustle people but he gets violently angry and hurt when Sammy won't let him fix a leak and scolds him endlessly. Ruffalo's is great at inflection, he sounds so like a teenager that it is almost off-putting. But he grounds the eccentricities of Terry in his struggle to do what is right. It is a subtle performance masquerading as a scene-stealing flashy one. The best scene for Ruffalo (and coincidentally the most maddening for me as a viewer) is when Sammy brings in a priest to talk to Ruffalo. It is heavy handed religious pandering, but Ruffalo's struggle is just riveting in that scene. It was a pleasure to watch Ruffalo take that ham handed scene and really make it work (especially considering
Lonergan himself plays the priest).
What is fascinating to me is how all the men in the movie are emotionally stunted boobs. Every one of them. Bob (Jon Tenney) is a distant, confused man who wants Sammy more because he thinks he needs to marry her, than actually wanting to. Brian is a moron who takes his managerial position more seriously than any man should, using it as a tool with which to infuse his anger and self-hatred. And in a brilliant little cameo Josh Lucas (as Rudy Sr.) is just an a**hole who isn't man enough to own up to his responsibilities.
The most mature male in the film is Rory Culkin's Rudy who says in his first scene that his assignments are stupid because they are arbitrary. It is a moment that would be precocious and cute, if Culkin weren't astute enough to realize that his Rory knows exactly what he's saying and doesn't just talk to be heard. In fact, Rudy rarely speaks even if questions are directed to him. He lives in his head, but not enough that he can't function, but enough that he doesn't feel the need to all the time. There is a brilliant moment of clarity in Culkin's performance at the end. He and Linney are sitting at the table and he gets up saying "I'm stopping." and shakes her to get her attention. It is the most contact Rudy shares with his mother and the first plea to be noticed. You see it in Culkin's eyes right before he stands up. It is the best performance in the film, easily.
The first problem with the film is the direction is a bit too reserved. There are great moments where characters have epiphanies or reaction and the camera is in an establishing shot. Meaning it is placed far enough away to see clocks on walls and outside windows, but not always the characters. It is a deliberate stylistic choice and as such I respect Lonergan, I just personally would have liked a more intimate directing style in places.
The second problem is the casting of Bob (Jon Tenney) and Brian (Matthew Broderick). The whole time I was watching the film I just kept thinking that the two actors should've traded roles. Really. For two reasons. One, Broderick and Linney have no chemistry and his role is pivotal to her character arc. All there scenes seemed horribly forced on Broderick's side. His portrayal is just a bit too mannered. Jon Tenney is an actor who could've handled the subtleties of playing Brian but instead is saddled with Bob, a horribly underwritten character. Had the roles been switched I think both actors would have been better suited.
I guess you can tell that I dug this movie. I did. I didn't expect to, but then that makes it all the more warm and fuzzy. There are some problems (the prologue does nothing and as such could have and should have been cut). But the performances and the nuance of the writing really make it work. That there isn't a conclusive resolution is just a testament to Lonergan's immense respect for the complexity of his characters and there issues.
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