Kevin Costner has matured well.
He projects an aura of calm self-assurance, leavened with a dry sense of humor, and a gaze that can shift — in a heartbeat — from tenderness to flinty anger. He excels at characters who may have yielded to baser instincts, back in the day, but who subsequently gained insight and patience … while retaining a hard edge.
He’s perfectly cast in the ongoing TV series Yellowstone, and the same is true of the role he plays here, in director/scripter Thomas Bezucha’s adaptation of Larry Watson’s 2013 novel. Let Him Go opens today in operational cinemas.
Having traveled far in order to see their grandson again, Margaret (Diane Lane) and
George (Kevin Costner) are delighted when the little boy appears: a mere prelude
to what rapidly becomes an unselling situation.
Bezucha’s treatment is long on characterization — particularly the quiet moments that define a relationship — and, regrettably, short on detail; the first act, in particular, omits all manner of necessary back-story, and leaves several key questions unanswered. One gets the impression that several expository scenes were left on the cutting-room floor.
Alternatively, this may have been deliberate; Bezucha focuses on his two protagonists, and how they respond first to tragedy, and later to an unexpected — and horrific — challenge. The genre is amorphous: equal parts thriller, mystery, latter-day Western and character drama, leavened with a subtle slice of social commentary.
At its core, though, this is a story about mothers and sons.
The setting is Montana, in the early 1960s. Retired sheriff George Blackledge (Costner) and his wife Margaret (Diane Lane) share their ranch home with their adult son James (Ryan Bruce), his wife Lorna (Kayli Carter), and the couple’s newborn baby, Jimmy. Margaret and James break horses for a living; the income is modest, but enough to keep them comfortable.
We sense that Lorna is an uncertain new mother, easily intimidated by the far more capable and assertive Margaret, who — in turn — isn’t sufficiently attentive to her daughter-in-law’s insecurities. Such subtleties hit the back burner when James suddenly dies of a broken neck, when thrown from his horse.
Bezucha abruptly flashes forward three years, to the day Lorna marries Donnie Weboy (Will Brittain). (Where did he come from? How did they meet?) Donnie joins the Blackledge household, but the fit feels wrong; Margaret’s suspicions are confirmed during a visit to town, when — unseen — she witnesses Donnie striking both Lorna and Jimmy (now played, alternately, by twins Bram and Otto Hornung).
Some brief period of time passes, at which point George and Margaret waken one morning to discover that Donnie, Lorna and Jimmy are gone, having departed in the middle of the night. (Why then? Given what subsequently transpires, why would Donnie have waited even a day to run off with his new family?)
Margaret is heartbroken, George disappointed but more pragmatic; he’s not sure they can do anything about it. Margaret has no such doubts; she’s determined to track them down and “rescue” Jimmy — with or without Lorna — so he can live with them. Despite recognizing the utter impracticality of such a scheme, George knows he can’t talk Margaret out of it. So he reluctantly agrees to accompany her.
Their one clue: Donnie has strong ties to his family. (And yet they weren’t at the wedding. One wonders why not.)
The film’s emotional core emerges here, because we must believe equally in Margaret’s half-mad plan, and George’s willingness to participate. Lane, grim-faced, grants Margaret the single-minded concentration of a woman still nurturing grief, who — having been unable to save her only son — tackles the challenge of saving her grandson by taking one logical, feasible step at a time … no matter how unrealistic the final goal.
There’s an underlying kindness to her obsessive determination; this is what George responds to, and what (no doubt) prompted him to marry her in the first place. Costner’s every glance at her radiates love, and trust; we realize that, despite George’s own doubts, he somehow believes that she might pull it off.
Or, alternatively, that the process itself will expose the scheme’s futility.
Neither of them reckons on what is to come.
George’s former law enforcement ties aid in the tracking process; they ultimately land in Gladstone, N.D., where they encounter Bill Weboy (Jeffrey Donovan, late of TV’s Burn Notice). His eyes are too bright, his swagger too insolent, his manner too condescending; he seems to be toying with them. George and Margaret sense this — how could they not? — but, mindful of their mission, tolerate it.
Indeed, nothing fazes George; Costner shifts to his silent, steely eyed aura of authority.
Bill cheerfully admits that Donnie, Lorna and Jimmy are at the Weboy family home, and invites George and Margaret to dinner. They meet matriarch Blanche Weboy (Leslie Manville) … who makes it very clear that neither Jimmy nor Lorna is going anywhere. The atmosphere of radiating menace is palpable; this is a nest of sociopaths, who essentially rule this part of North Dakota. (Seriously? How did that happen?)
Matters … get nasty.
Donovan is terrific as the flat-out-scary Bill, who radiates the malice of a man who undoubtedly tortured small animals as a child. Manville is equally vicious, but Blanche is by no means a one-dimensional Ma Barker; in her mind, she was done wrong first, when George and Margaret “took” Donnie into their home. By her twisted logic, she’s therefore entitled to keep Jimmy.
Adam Stafford and Connor Mackay are hulking brutes as Bill and Donnie’s brothers, Marvin and Elton: two-legged Dobermans who’ll go for the throat, if Blanche gives the signal.
Booboo Stewart rounds out the cast as Peter Dragswolf, a quietly dignified indigenous man who lives on his own in the badlands. George and Margaret encounter him en route to Gladstone; she takes a motherly interest in the young man, worried about him living on his own. Stewart puts quiet intensity into the explanation: Having been forced to attend a white boarding school where he was made to abandon his language in order to become “civilized,” he now belongs to neither world, and exists in a sort of limbo.
Calgary, Alberta, effortless stands in for the uninterrupted terrain of 1960s Montana and North Dakota. Cinematographer Guy Godfree grants painterly radiance to these gorgeous vistas, while — alternatively — giving claustrophobic intensity to interior tableaus. (Godfree’s visual aesthetic was inspired by American photographer/painter Saul Leiter.)
Michael Giacchino’s quiet orchestral score — piano, guitar and gentle strings — initially evokes the Americana sensitivities of Aaron Copland … until, quite suddenly, the music turns as sinister as the story.
Having become so heavily invested in these characters, we’re at the edge of our seats as Bezucha builds to his third act. Despite its narrative flaws, Let Him Go is a compelling drama: not to be approached lightly, and not soon forgotten.
No comments:
Post a Comment