Get Low
Directed by Aaron Schneider. US. 2009. PG-13. 100 min.
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“When Felix Bush comes to town, town pays attention. It isn’t merely that he looks like a demonic Walt Whitman, or carries an ax handle, or is graced with all the social skills one might accrue by living alone for 40 years in the backwoods of Tennessee. It’s not even the layer of filth he’s accumulated. It’s the verdigris of myth. Old Man Bush is a killer, people say, a barbarian, a God-knows-what.In the liturgy of American history and literature, Felix—played by national monument Robert Duvall—is something of a convention: the ostracized loner, the demonized eccentric. So the idea that “Get Low”—director Aaron Schneider’s ambitiously atmospheric dramedy of the ’30s South—is “based on a true story” is really beside the point. It’s about myth creation—and sin and memory.
Felix comes to town because he wants someone to help him throw a “living funeral party.” He wants to attend his own wake so he can hear what all those people he’s been avoiding for 40 years have to say about him. Outlandish, they say. Really? Tom and Huck attended their own funeral, and “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” is even older than Felix Bush. Felix simply wants to host his own goodbye, maybe have a band, and the reasons why are the reasons “Get Low” is essential viewing. That, and the acting.
Sometime around “Lonesome Dove,” Mr. Duvall went into quasi-codger mode, and he still serves up crusty, cranky, disarmingly frank and outright rude with a twinkle in his eye. But Felix, even in his cootness, represents a golden opportunity for an actor who too often now gets shoehorned into one-dimensional parts that only suggest (or exploit) what he brings to a movie as both actor and icon. In Felix, Mr. Duvall has a character of few words and large feelings, mostly the guilt and regret that have driven him out of society.
None of it is very obscure. The movie opens with a flashback of a house engulfed in flames; a lone figure running from it; Felix awakening from a sweaty dream and staring at an antique picture of a bygone beauty pinned to a bare wall. His bedside lamp is still lit, suggesting both hellfire and eternal love. Schneider tells us the whole story right there, but Mr. Duvall, who’s probably looking at another Oscar nomination next year, gives it a heart.
The movie’s soul, however, arrives via another avenue entirely, namely Bill Murray as struggling undertaker and probable ex-felon Frank Quinn. Frank seems dismayed that he’s gone legit and still can’t make a living—and in a business everyone needs. “People are dying in bunches,” he says, tossing aside the newspaper. “Except here.” For Frank, Felix’s morbid plan is like a birthday cake with candles. He smells a score: Told about the ball of untidy cash Felix has been displaying in his attempt to buy that funeral, Frank gives a knowing response: “Ooooh,” he says. “Hermit money. That’s good.” Where his underling Buddy (Lucas Black) is painfully honest and uninteresting, Frank is inherently larcenous, and a laugh a minute.
He’s also the personification of a certain kind of virtue, precisely because ordinary virtue is against his nature. After Felix goes on the radio to invite the public to his funeral—and announces a raffle for the posthumous possession of his 300-odd unspoiled acres—Frank is gleeful. But once the cash starts arriving in the mail, we feel Frank’s near-physical pain at not being able to throw it in a bag and flee—as he’s likely done once or twice before. Frank’s sense of morality isn’t born of geography or community or religion. His is an existential struggle, in a place where uttering “existential” might have gotten you arrested. And Mr. Murray, as usual, has better timing than a getaway car.
Like the music that percolates through “Get Low”—the rollicking nouveau-bluegrass of Dobro virtuoso Jerry Douglas, which is used at points to amp up a sluggish pace—”Get Low” has a dichotomous nature, personified by Mr. Duvall and Mr. Murray. Back around the time Mr. Duvall was starring in “Network” (1976), Mr. Murray was debuting on “Saturday Night Live.” It would be tempting to concude (sic) that their artistic trajectories have finally intersected, but it’s not quite true. “Get Low” (as in under the earth) never really wants to be the total period piece and thanks to Mr. Murray it always has one foot on modernist/absurdist turf. He’s not alone in being an anachronism. Felix’s onetime love, Mattie Darrow, played by a wonderful Sissy Spacek, isn’t your usual 1938 movie woman. She’s self-possessed, assured and there’s a sauciness about her, too—much like Chris Provenzano and C. Gaby Mitchell’s script. “He was beautiful,” Mattie says of the younger Felix and you can hear all the bygone longing, rippling like a brook in a Tennessee wood.” (John Anderson, Wall Street Journal)