Susan Granger’s review of “Get Low” (Sony Classics)
Robert Duvall astonishes with the authenticity of his style, his skill and his overall knockout performance in this uniquely American folktale; it’s an actor’s showcase if there ever was one.
Set in East Tennessee in the Depression-era 1930s, Felix Bush (Duvall) was a prominent Southerner until he mysteriously disappeared into the backwoods 40 years ago and became an angry, eccentric hermit, living in a hand-hewn cabin and adjacent barn with a shotgun always at his side and only his beloved mule as company. Then, suddenly, he decides that he’d like to know – in advance – what people are going to say about him after he dies. He realizes that he has become a local legend, whispered about among the curious townsfolk. So Felix contacts the somewhat shady mortician, Frank Quinn (Bill Murray), and his eager young assistant, Buddy Robinson (Lucas Black), expressing his bizarre wish to “get low” and hold a mock “living funeral” to which anyone who has ever heard a story about him is invited as long as they’re willing to tell the tale in public. In addition, wily Felix proposes selling five-dollar tickets to a raffle that day for his 300 acres of virgin timberland. But what no one except widowed Mattie Darrow (Sissy Spacek) and an Illinois preacher named Charlie Jackson (Bill Cobbs) realizes is that dour, taciturn Felix’s conscience has been burdened with a shameful secret that he’s never revealed and he’s seeking redemption.
Co-written by Chris Provenzano (TV’s “Mad Men”) and C. Gaby Mitchell (“Blood Diamond”), who fictionalized the concept from a true 1938 incident, and directed as his first feature by Oscar-winning cinematographer/editor Aaron Schneider (“Two Soldiers”), this somewhat surreal, rural drama unfolds at its own leisurely, rather uneven and meandering pace, particularly in the beginning. Genuine to the last detail, including David Boyd’s photography and Jan A. Kaczmarek’s bluegrass music, it’s an excellent ensemble presentation and a subtle, yet compelling tour-de-force by Duvall.
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Get Low” is an intriguing, unpredictable 9. It’s a slyly powerful, homespun fable.
