Prince Avalanche.

In 1987 43000 woodland acres in central Texas were burned by wildfires. Approximately 1600 homes were destroyed and four lives were lost. The cause of the fires remains unknown.[1] Set a year after the fires writer and director David Gordon Green (Joe 2013) based this ‘buddy movie’ on an Icelandic comedy film by Hafsteinn Gunner Sigurdsson called Either Way (2011). Two men are repainting the lines that ran down the middle of roads that meander there way through the area of the disaster. The older of the two is Alvin (Paul Rudd) who has been using this isolated work place to escape from the realities of life. That is until his girlfriend’s brother Lance (Emile Hursch) comes to work with him. Unlike Alvin, Lance is more at home in the city than in the countryside.

 

The two men start to bond.

The two men form a tenuous relationship at first, with Lance going off at the weekend to ‘party’ leaving Alvin to daydream about his imagined life with his work mates sister Madison. Alvin also meets a strange old lady that’s searching in the burned ashes of her home to find her pilots licence!   When a slightly unhinged truck driver leaves alcohol with the two roadmen they start to bond - helped by a drunken binge!

 

The eerie Bastrop landscape. 

Effectively a two hander that’s both human and personnel and although sedately paced it’s a captivating wee film that never looses your interest. Our two leads handle the subtle humour extremely competently and the DOP Tom Orr makes a great deal of the burnt out landscape’s giving an eerie feel to the movie.  Shot on location in Bastrop County Texas where in September 2011 the most destructive wildfire in Texas history took place!

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[1] Introduction to the film.

Joe.

Be warned this film involves a very powerful performance from Nicolas Cage, a statement you probably don’t hear very often. The only other time, recently anyway, would have possible been for his portrayal of real life policeman Glenn Flothe in The Frozen Ground (2013). 

In David Gordon Greens latest outing, filmed and set in Austin Texas, Cage plays Joe (2013) of the title. Joe is an ex con, he’s the boss of a gang of men that illicitly poisons trees for a living, Joe is also a mess, he drinks and smokes to much. Although Joe has anger problems, which got him his jail sentence of 26 months after he knee capped a policeman with a gun, he has a heart of gold, treats his worker’s fairly, his whores kindly and befriends the young 15 year old Gary after giving him a job. Gary’s family consists of his alcoholic father who regularly beats him and his mother and a sister who has stopped speaking due to circumstances that are only hinted at.

Joe and Gary chill.

We are again in Winters Bone (2009) and Out of the Furnace (2013) territory, the lower echelons of society where the American dream involves large quantities of alcohol, sudden violence and beaten up 4 wheel drive trucks. Beyond the outward appearances there’s a lonely man who works and plays hard and who befriends and builds a relationship with a 15-year-old boy who accepts responsibilities well beyond his status. These two unlikely human beings form a bond, which is the backbone of the movie, and bring to it an emotional edge  that goes beyond the characters outward appearances. As I have said Cage is excellent as is Tye Sheridan, who you may have seen in The Tree of Life (2011) and as Gary in the award winning Mud (2012). This adaption of Larry Browns 1991 novel of the same name has characters you have no trouble in believing in and is a movie that has grit and bite and is rich in atmosphere, which is greatly helped by the director’s regular DOP Tim Orr.  Highly recommended.

A rather sad footnote to this movie concerns Gary Poulter who was found dead in a shallow body of water before the film was released. It was Poulter that played Gary’s alcoholic bullying father Wade and was a real life homeless person who suffered from alcoholism and also was diagnosed with cancer. His performance was a case of art imitating real life!