Get Low

Get Low and its cast were very well-received last night at Austin's Paramount Theatre as part of the SXSW Film Festival. This is the type of well-written, well-acted serious film that gets made all too rarely today. The excellent cast was led by three aging legends – the cantankerous Robert Duvall, the hilarious Bill Murray and elegant Sissy Spacek – all of whom attended the SXSW performance and answered questions. They have lost nothing with age. One-time child star Lucas Black has begun to come into his own as an actor as well. Get Low is an example of the type of wonderful film making that can be done with excellent actors working on a minimal budget. The period setting in depression era Tennessee was entirely believable. The film is both very funny and deeply moving.

Very loosely-based on real events, the film tells the story of a backwoods hermit – played by Duvall with grace and spirit – who decides to hold his own funeral while he is still alive. The story is about loneliness, guilt, redemption, forgiveness, love, and human mortality. There have been few recent films that explore such difficult territory and do so with such humanity, decency and humor. I hope that this film gets a theatrical release so that more people can enjoy this rare treat.

It's hard to classify this movie, so I'll just say it's a lot different from most fare you see at the theater these days.

What it offers up, I thought, was superb acting and cinematography. It's no surprise the acting is good when you have the likes of Robert Duvall, Bill Murray, Sissy Spacey and Lucas Black. All of them are excellent.

This is so beautifully filmed you swear you are right in the middle of rural America in the 1930s. Shot-after-shot is a marvel. The story is slow but it should keep your interest as you wonder what "Felix Bush" (Duvall) is going to do at the end. You're never quite what he's going to say and do, at any time, actually, which keeps the story intriguing. I guess you could say that for anyone was had been a hermit for 40 years, living alone in the woods.

I suspect this film didn't get the publicity and acclaim it should have gotten, despite it's well-known cast. It's a "sleeper," and highly-recommended.

This is what movies are about:

It's a compelling story, flawless acting with spot-on casting choices, deftly directed, and with camera work supports the story with warm tones. I don't know of one person who has seen this and doesn't rave. The Oscar race begins here. It's wonderful to be rapt in a film that doesn't need explosions, chases or CGI to make the film work.

Every person involved in the making of this film is an artisan. If your a budding filmmaker, class is in session - a must see.

Duval and Spacek are in their prime - there's also a lesson here that youth and beauty are only skin deep... and talent grows with age.

A charming sleeper of a tale set in the 1930s. A reclusive hermit, the subject of mistrust and rumor by generations of local townsfolk, nearing the end of his life suddenly decides to throw himself a funeral party and invites the entire town. Superlative and nuanced performances are turned in by Robert Duvall, as the old man, Sissy Spacek, as a widowed former acquaintance, and Bill Murray, as the funeral director who agrees to organize the event. Fantastic supporting performances are also given by Lucas Black, as the Funeral director's more moral assistant, and Bill Cobbs, as the Reverend who comes to speak at the funeral. The director, Aaron Schneider, captures the period extremely well and the cinematography and musical score are wonderful. The movie handles tough subjects like death, regret, suspicion and guilt with wisdom and a gentle humor that allows the audience to take it all in like one big ice cream sundae. Bravo ! Go see it ! Tell your friends to go see it !!

While Hollywood has consistently examined the "angry young man," his older counterpart is normally portrayed by a character actor in a minor role. Robert Duvall is no stranger to portraying off-beat, aging male leads, but here he accepts the ultimate challenge -- drawing an audience in to examine the life of a self-made hermit with a widely reviled yet barely explained past.

Bill Murray and Sissy Spacek, a dream team supporting cast, also portray vintage folk with secrets of their own. This partly frontier western, largely psychological mystery unravels slowly in scenes with little or no dialog. What dialog there is offers several levels of potential meaning through pregnant pauses, ill-defined sentence fragments and questions with no immediate answers.

The viewer either chooses to fill in the blanks by closely observing peripheral elements in each scene, or simply awaits a climax that ultimately explains everything. That scene never quite tells all, but intentionally and inventively so. It's the former viewer for whom this film has been so meticulously well-crafted to side-step the clearly declarative and ultimately obvious.

The score is a particularly captivating mix of period Americana and original music that resonates with the time and place -- even when performed by a Polish orchestra or under-appreciated U.S. folk/country performers of our own era.

In short, GET LOW is a niche film that quietly rewards a cinema-loving audience for investing its full attention. Leave your smart phone at home for the best multi-tasking experiences are built into the work itself. The 2009 copyright date indicates Sony Classics, after due deliberation, acquired a "hard sell" that other studios overlooked.

An early October Oscar season screening of this December U.S. release ended with much applause, atypical for guild audiences. Almost half even stayed through the credits, an indication that many involved in the film on all levels are worthy of name-recognition "for your consideration.