Mud

Jeff Nichols's follow-up to his excellent 2011 film Take Shelter is a timeless and refreshingly understated Southern coming-of-age story. The cast, from the smallest extra to the two central performances that ground this picture, is excellent. Tye Sheridan plays 14-year-old Elise with the honesty, simplicity, and vulnerability that can only be achieved by a child actor with the kind of inherent talent that can never be acquired in acting school—think Lucas Black in Sling Blade or River Phoenix in Stand By Me. Matthew McConaughey gives the best in his recent run of outstanding performances as the title character.

The story is about two young, river-dwelling Arkansas teenagers who discover a scruffy fugitive hiding out on a small island. The narrative unfolds like the many boat trips the boys take on the river—sometimes with the leisurely pacing of a fishing trip and sometimes with the anxious clip of rushing home before the sun goes down. Mud is a wonderful cinematic depiction of how children experience and process day-to-day life. It is subtle and authentic but also still very much "a movie" in that it is less concerned with realism than with truth. It recalls the writing of Mark Twain, Tennessee Williams, and Sam Shepard—and it's fitting that Shepard appears in a supporting role. Stuart Greer, Sarah Paulson, Michael Shannon, and Joe Don Baker all give solid performances as the adults on the periphery of the story. Their characters are not written to be one-dimensional ciphers, as adults often are in stories about young kids, and each actor is able to convey a great deal of history and emotional life during their brief time on screen. The movie also features an effective use of Reese Witherspoon's talents. Witherspoon has always been an achingly beautiful but frustratingly cold actress, which makes her ideal as the object of Mud's misplaced affections. This film would mark the first of many excellent and surprising mid-career performances by the actress.

The film's locations are gorgeous, but what is really special about the rural setting is its ability to show us a childhood that has all but vanished in this day and age. The kind of world where a kid can ride around in the back of his father's pick-up truck helping to make deliveries or drive his dirt bike down a main street without a helmet. It is a smartphone-and-internet-free domain where kids are often unsupervised and unscheduled, enabling them to get into trouble—but also to acquire much wisdom at a young age. It is the setting of many coming-of-age films from the 1970s, yet Mud never feels like a retread of something better we have seen or read before. Set in contemporary times and viewed through the eyes of its young main character, it feels like something completely fresh to be discovered and explored.