A MYSTERY HALF EXPLAINED
Midnight Special hides its answers
If you put your hands together for Michael Shannon, you’ve got to hand it to writer/director Jeff Nichols. Nichols didn’t exactly discover Shannon (the actor’s first film credit was playing an excited bridegroom, way back in 1993’s Groundhog Day), but all his major screen roles — in TV’s Boardwalk Empire, Oscar nominated in Revolutionary Road, Golden Globe nominated in 99 Homes, not to mention General Zod in Man of Steel — came after Nichols cast him as the lead in his 2007 Southern Gothic tale, Shotgun Stories.
Since then, Shannon has been Nichols’ go-to guy in a variety of never-the-same-thing-twice performances. In 2011 he was visited by visions of the end of the world in Take Shelter, which also features a pre-breakout Jessica Chastain.
The next year brought a small but pivotal role in Mud, opposite Matthew McConaughey.
Now comes Midnight Special, a kind of spiritual cousin to Take Shelter. Nichols has said he made Shelter before his first child was born and Midnight after, pouring his fear into each.
Shannon stars as Roy Meyer, who has just kidnapped his eightyear-old son, Alton, from the clutches of a cult. The kid doesn’t seem fazed by events, sitting calmly in the backseat wearing swimming goggles and reading comic books, but audiences will fear for his safety as Roy and his accomplice Lucas (Joel Edgerton) tear up the back roads of Texas, lights off, navigating by night-vision goggles. Sure, they stop to help a car-crash victim, and they radio for help after a police officer is shot — but Lucas is also the one who shot him.
Nichols leads us gradually into the story, meting out background details — Lucas’s day job came as a great surprise to me — without any sense of urgency. Where some directors hold your hand, Nichols merely beckons you to follow if you want.
And you will want to, if only to find out more about this quirky, preternaturally calm child (Jaeden Lieberher, perfectly poised). Why is the federal government expending such energy — including Adam Driver, jumpy as always — to track him down? Why is the cult leader (Sam Shepard) also so keen on getting him back? What is the significance of the date and co-ordinates his dad is racing to reach? And why does the kid shoot blue fire out of his eyes?
Midnight Special is the kind of film that raises just enough questions to keep things moving forward, and then answers about half of them. This may annoy some viewers, but on balance there’s enough information to satisfy all but the most persnickety. What remains unknown should feel like an invitation to ponder, rather than a plot-hole pothole.
Nichols has long had an interest in exploring the clouds that form when the cold front of reason meets a humid, low-pressure belief system. Take Shelter was about a guy who could either see the future or was going crazy, and who entertained both possibilities. Mud felt like a 19th-century fable washed up on the shores of this new millennium.
Midnight Special offers its share of hypotheses for Alton’s special powers, in varying shades and degrees of otherworldliness. The cult thinks he’s hearing the voice of God, but an FBI agent explains that it’s military transmissions he’s been receiving — though that still doesn’t explain how he’s able to pull them down from the exosphere, and decrypt them to boot. And when the boy starts speaking in tongues, Roy calmly tells Lucas to set the car radio on scan — it turns out that Alton is merely parroting a DJ, like picking up Mexican radio though your fillings.
Kirsten Dunst makes a late appearance as Alton’s mom, but with little to do. Nichols has never written particularly strong female characters. That’s an observation rather than a judgment. And her presence does prove that it takes a family to raise a child — plus a village, a government, a religion and possibly something extra.
Nichols already has another film in the works, based on the true story of Richard and Mildred Loving (Edgerton and Ruth Negga), who were sentenced to a year in prison for the crime of being interracially married in 1959 Virginia. Shannon plays Grey Villet, a photographer who documented the Lovings’ love story. It opens in November. I can’t wait.