Nichols makes unorthodox film about ‘mystical’ parenthood

Don’t expect director Jeff Nichols to spoon feed you.

The filmmaker behind Take Shelter and Mud is back with Midnight Special. And once again, a viewer is required to engage the imagination and be an active participant in the storytelling.

Midnight Special concerns a child with unusual gifts and his concerned father (Michael Shannon), who must deliver the little boy to a certain place at a certain time. Police, FBI and a religious cult are all in pursuit of the child because of his special abilities; the sci-fi chase thriller appears to be a metaphor for the great mystery of parenthood, but it also has elements of religious allegory and potential political interpretations.

“I think being a parent is kind of mystical,” says Nichols, 37, himself the father of a five-year-old.

“If you’re making a movie about parenthood, which I think I did, you know, you don’t know who your children are going to be. You have ideas of who you want them to be or who you think they should be, but you never really know and you never have any control over it. You’re always trying to understand something that’s kind of unknowable.

“What will happen to them? What events will shape who they are? Have I given them the security and tools necessary to deal with those things? You try to make it a tangible thing, but it’s not.”

Midnight Special is the fifth of Nichols’ movies to feature Shannon. As Nichols has only made five movies total, it is an interesting collaboration. Shannon, says Nichols, “doesn’t care about being famous. There are very few people you can say that about. Mike Shannon just cares about the honesty of the work. The integrity of it. He doesn’t over-think it or feel the need to talk about it a lot. It’s a beautiful simple thing … and there’s poetry underneath everything he does.”