ATLRetro

JOE (2014); Dir. David Gordon Green; Starring Nicolas Cage and Tye Sheridan; Atlanta Film Festival.

By Andrew Kemp
Contributing Writer

Gary (Tye Sheridan) has two father figures to choose from in David Gordon Green’s new movie JOE, which opened the 2014 Atlanta Film Festival on Friday night. On one side is Gary’s father Wade (Gary Poulter), a man whose natural charisma has been shriveled to jerky by alcoholism. On the other is Gary’s new employer, Joe (Nicolas Cage), an ex-con whose own raging addiction to violence has closed off his past and stunted his future. Joe struggles every day to stay on his wagon. It’s not clear if Wade ever made it on in the first place.  Gary’s choices aren’t ideal, but that’s just his lot. He’s a hard luck kid; having a choice in anything at all represents a significant improvement in his quality of life.

It shouldn’t be a surprise which side Gary ultimately takes, but then that’s a matter of plot, and JOE isn’t all that concerned with those kinds of details. Oh, there’s a clear narrative, but JOE is so detached that it buries its own exposition in the dirt, leaving its title character a mostly unsolvable riddle. This isn’t to the film’s detriment—Joe’s single glance at a woman in traffic says more than a page of monologue ever would—but it makes Green’s intentions clear. Green and screenwriter Gary Hawkins, adapting from Larry Brown’s 1991 novel, devote their energies away from the mechanics of the story and toward building Joe’s dusty world, molding gritty authenticity from the clay of the movie’s East Texas locations and the people in them. The story chugs along a familiar path of gunfire and redemption, but it’s the scenery along the way that makes the trip worthwhile.

Green (PINEAPPLE EXPRESS, PRINCE AVALANCHE) is a longtime Austin native and has demonstrated a nagging irritation with falseness (YOUR HIGHNESS aside). He would be the first to notice a false note in his film’s environment, and so he eschews traditional casting and populates his movie with unknowns and non-actors. Poulter himself was a homeless street performer and breakdancer in Austin when Green cast him as Wade, effectively the film’s third lead. Rather than be overwhelmed by the sudden attention, Poulter instead steals the show, oozing a chewy realism in his performance that professional actors sweat blood trying to replicate. He’s magnetic to watch, precisely because you don’t know what he’s going to say or do next. There’s nothing premeditated or restrained about Poulter’s performance. He never once seems like he’s acting. In the Q&A after the screening, Green spoke of how he met Poulter on the streets, and then brought the crowd low by revealing that Poulter died shortly after filming completed, still on those very same streets.

Green likewise identified a group of workers who feature prominently in the film and admitted that he simply picked them up one morning at a spot for day laborers, giving them a day’s pay for their work on the film, and inviting the standouts to become a part of the cast. Those workers—as well as gas station attendants, barflys, and bums—contribute to JOE’s naturalism that brings its barren, cruel, arbitrary world to terrifying life. One might assume that placing Nicolas Cage—the actoriest actor who ever did act—in the midst of all of this cinema verite would result in a violent clash in tone, but as per usual, Cage refuses to be outdone by reality. In fact, his rare moments of exaggerated Cage-ness (such as a cringeworthy limp he adopts late in the film) serve to make him seem larger than life, bigger than this no-horse town, and barely in control of his temper. Cage always works best as a lead actor in those moments when his controlled lunacy serves the character rather than becomes the character. In the case of Joe, it’s a surprisingly easy fit.

Sheridan likewise continues to demonstrate a talent beyond his years, just as he did in last year’s AFF opening night film, MUD. Without his sincere and seemingly effortless performance, there would be no hook on which to hang the proceedings. As Gary, he plays one of those saintly children who haven’t yet figured out just how heavily the world is stacked against them, and would be too stubborn to give up if they did. His relationship with Joe is easy and believable, and you can understand why he’s the type of kid it might be worth going into battle for.

JOE is filled with atrocity—children and animals, in particular, have a bad time—but it’s a well-crafted and sometimes surprisingly-warm film. It’s also specifically Southern in a way that’s tough to find and impossible to fake. That makes JOE a particularly nice fit for the AFF, and it sets the tone, and raises the bar, for the festival still to come.

Andrew Kemp is a screenwriter and game designer who started talking about movies in 1984 and got stuck that way. He can be seen around town wherever there are movies, cheap beer and little else.