June 7, 2008 [Shotgun Stories]

Michael Shannon's mouth often seems anguished that he may have to say terrible things, while his eyes drill into that anguish with combined rage and entreaty. And then there's his frame, lanky but somehow huge, like Karloff, a skinny guy seemingly twenty feet tall and big as a barn.

In his review of Shotgun Stories, Roger Ebert takes a good hard long looks at that quiet nightmare frame and asserts, "The hero of the film does not believe the future is doomed by the past." And Lord he was right—and something else shows up, something Shannon brings: a quiet that comes from the conviction that no one's listening anyway, that any sound advice will fall on deaf ears—they've claimed the right of vengeance, like Greeks in their tragedies—and something worse: that maybe he really doesn't have anything to say, maybe his brothers are living in the only world they can, one so full of resentment and hurt feelings that you either turn it inward—as Son seems to have done—and start to waste away, or you blast away and make it hit someone in the head and be done with them.

But Son won't have it. So he plugs away at his brothers, keeping his fingers crossed that their lives at the edge of a town that's not much better off than they are can still be salvaged, at least for anyone who comes after. Ebert wants us to hope that "Son finds the life he desires for his own son," and in this closing line I thought of one of the central moments in American movies, when the homesteader old lady in The Searchers tells us that she knows nothing will be built for her, but that something solid will stand on her bones. Her job is to clear the way, just as Son keeps looking and looking—Shannon's eyes like a shoulder pressing against a leaning weight—straight at his brothers to plead that they help him do what he can.