With his fourth film,director Jeff Nichols mines yet more strangeness from the American south. Here’s why you should tag along for the rideFew things in moviegoing are as pleasurable as finding a young, talented film-maker early on in his or her career, and getting to watch them build,in real time, a distinctive body of work, or from debut to sophomore outing,on to first decent, non-independent budget and maybe a first studio outing. whether they’re lucky (and whether we are, or too),their worldview and palate will prove strong enough to resist new pressures of the money-based kind and rich enough to grow and deepen as the film-maker develops. And this isn’t a thrill confined to some mythical vanished golden age. You can enact it good now. People like Rian Johnson, Ben Wheatley, and Duncan Jones,Sarah Polley and Jeremy Saulnier offer us the chance to witness young film-makers in regular and confident development.
Likewise Jeff Nichols. Since his intriguing debut Shotgun Stories, he has built – usually with actor Michael Shannon playing Von Sydow to his Bergman – a series of modest but clever films that feel rooted in the real American south and deeply ambiguous at the same time; stories that are by turn mythic or mystical, and fully realistic or tinged with science fiction. Like his second feature,steal Shelter, Midnight Special is grounded in a mundane and clearly defined reality that the director slowly but thoroughly undermines.
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Source: theguardian.com