Get Low

Have you ever had someone tell you something they viewed as a terrible, shameful secret, only for you to completely fail to see it as being significant? Did they get angry, did they feel relief? Those are the kind of thoughts I’ve been pondering since viewing Get Low.

The vicissitudes of film distribution are a strange beast. According to IMDB, Get Low was produced in 2009, so it’s taken two years to find its way to us. But just as well it did, as it’s a fine story of the peculiarities of the human spirit. Based on a folk tale of a man who threw his own funeral party, Get Low gives Robert Duvall a chance to flex his acting muscles, sketching a lifetime of pain and regret with a carefully understated hand. You see, Felix has been living a hermit’s life for roughly forty years by choice. He’s created a prison to punish himself for deeds only he knows. In town nobody knows who he is or where he came from, but there’s plenty of rumours and gossip: that he’s a murderer, and he’s a danger to the community. Pretty much all the standard things people say about outsiders who refuse to participate in their group. But then one day he appears in town and starts asking for help to hold his own funeral. And what’s more, he wants people to come along and tell all the stories they’ve heard about him. He wants to know what people think about him. Something that, as Frank rightly says may be a problem, since Felix’s reputation suggests that if they say uncomplimentary things, he’s liable to shoot them dead. But in reality, this drama is a smokescreen, and the beauty of the film is the gentle and humourous way in which it teases out the torment of a man’s soul, and shows all various efforts he makes to seek absolution without actually confronting his demons.

The story ambles along at an intriguing pace, slow but never dull, with superb performances from all the actors, especially Duvall and Sissy Spacek, playing a former flame of Felix’s. Her presence proves pivotal, with the cost of Felix’s inability to speak about his past found with her. Bill Murray is his usual excellent self, and his trademark deadpan style is spot-on for Frank, who in contrast to Felix, has been just about everywhere.

But for all its charms, Get Low is not a perfect movie. Characters appear briefly, appear to be destined to play a part in the story, and then are never seen again. Plot threads are set up and then abandoned. There’s a haphazardness to some of the storytelling that it manages to get away with, but it still niggles in the mind. And when the revelation finally comes, I wasn’t all that impressed. Felix describes something that was awful, and the guilt he feels is tremendous, but I couldn’t see it that way. Instead, I saw a man trapped by pride and shame, unable to confess because that would have brought the experience to an end, and the prison he creates is as much a comfort to him as a penance. And so I’m left thinking about how people would rather stay in misery than risk happiness, or wallow in guilt rather than seek forgiveness.

Whilst Get Low is not perfect technically, it is beautiful in the way it shows the complexities of emotion and psychology that can leave a man hog-tied by his past. It’s a film I’m still thinking about and that makes it a rich experience.

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