When Felix Bush (Robert Duvall) tells the local church pastor (Gerald McRaney) that it’s time for him to Get Low, he means getting down to business–the business of dying. Felix knows the end of his life is approaching fast, and he wants to make plans for his funeral. However, there are two unusual obstacles to his wishes: First, he wants to be there–alive; second, who’s going to attend the funeral of a notorious hermit?
What sounds like an outlandish request to the pastor is welcome news to the ears of Frank Quinn (Bill Murray), funeral home proprietor in a Depression-era Southern town, whose business is dying because people aren’t dying. Frank and his young assistant, Buddy (Lucas Black), are shocked at the size of Felix’s ball of hermit cash, and Frank is willing to do whatever it takes to fulfill the old coot’s requests and get his hands on that money. But despite the commission he’ll earn from this first sale, Buddy has misgivings and questions about this crazy codger.
That’s because Felix has spent the past 40 years living alone in a cabin in the woods with only his mule for company. While fiercely protective of his privacy, he’s still managed to build a reputation throughout the region as a mean old man who, according to rumor and legend, once killed somebody. Felix says he wants his “living funeral” to be open to anyone who has a story to tell about him. He ups the attendance ante by offering his valuable land in a raffle among the funeral-goers. But there are two people who seem to know Felix’s past a little too well, and are hesitant to reveal it. One is Reverend Charlie Jackson (Bill Cobbs), recipient of a rare and generous gift of Felix’s expert carpentry skills. The other is Mattie Darrow (Sissy Spacek), a widowed piano teacher who once “had relations” with Felix and still obviously holds some affection for him.
The strongest feature of Get Low is the casting of the lead roles. Duvall, who’s portrayed such a wide range of memorable characters across the decades, adds another to the list. He has some good lines and moments, both funny and serious, and absolutely nails Felix’s emotional climax. Likewise, Sissy Spacek may seem a bit dowdy in her character’s wardrobe, but her charm and talent still radiate, and her scenes with Duvall are a dream for all who appreciate fine acting. (Trivia: Duvall and Spacek both won Oscars for playing country singers.) Bill Murray is in his more subdued indie-film mode here, but he’s always likable to watch and has such great timing and dry delivery. And let me take a moment to recognize the great work here by Lucas Black; from his outstanding performance as the kid in Sling Blade, he has matured into a fine young man, and I hope he (and his smooth Southern twang) continue to grace movie screens well into the future.
BUT…
Despite this great cast and a few compelling moments here and there, this movie is strangely less than the sum of its parts. The film feels like it was created from a negotiated production package deal rather than a script. It all must have looked great on paper–a first feature from an Oscar-winning short-film director, a lead character that’s pure Oscar bait for an aging Hollywood legend, significant supporting roles for two other Oscar-level performers and other recognizable actors, a rural period setting, some emotional triggers to appease the aging target audience, and apparently some budgetary considerations to allow the movie to be made under the shingle of Sony’s art-house division.
For instance, the period sets are not much more than Felix’s cabin in the woods and a few vintage-dressed storefronts in town; the camera stays fairly tight to minimize the need for set dressing and costumed extras except for a few crucial scenes. Also, apart from the six aforementioned actors, there are only two or three other speaking roles of any size, and these characters are poorly used. One, a thuggish town bully who picks a fight with Felix, is just a weak subplot that leads nowhere and has no payoff. Several subplots and character elements seem to be introduced and then dropped, such as a burglary midway through the film. These distractions make the film feel disjointed, as though it had to be recut in the editing room and the leftovers from a few excised plot threads remain. Director Aaron Schneider also takes the editor’s credit, so I blame him.
Ultimately, Get Low boils down to the central mysteries of why Felix became a misanthropic hermit and how much or little Mattie knows about his past. This may be interesting for fans of Duvall and Spacek (and they share a really nice scene in Felix’s cabin, beautifully photographed in naturalistic dim lamplight), but they become the only interesting people here. Bill Murray is fine to watch, but we don’t learn much about his character, nor about Lucas Black’s Buddy, even though it’s pointedly established early in the film that Buddy is a young family man struggling to support a wife and baby during the Depression. We don’t even get a clear sense of the locale–presumably Tennessee or thereabouts, as Illinois is mentioned as being to the north (the movie was filmed in Georgia, however).
It’s a movie that feels strangely incomplete. Even the poster design reflects this; Duvall and Murray are “low” in the picture, and the upper half of the poster is almost empty, as though the space was reserved for something that wasn’t ready in time for the press run. Just like a hermit’s life, Get Low may draw a curious stare, but in the end one wonders why so much potential ultimately went to waste.
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