By Gary Deane
Ree: You
always have scared me.
Teardrop:
That's ‘cause you're smart.
from WINTER'S BONE (2010)
In the popular imagination, film noir is most often associated with the city, along with its "eight million stories" of world-weary private dicks, streetwise gangsters, sleazy con artists, bent cops, backstabbing femmes fatales, and just plain chumps.
However, as urban centers have strived to become precincts of gentrified vibrancy and creative wonderfulness, much of film and literary noir has packed its bags and headed for the rural heartland, where basic responses to matters at hand may not always be as "nuanced" or as "mindful" as city folks would hope for.
Welcome to the land of Rural
Noir AKA Country Noir, a world that can feel like it’s about to explode in
violence and frequently does, leaving kith and kin to settle scores and make
things right amid a conspiracy of silence. Do what you need to but don’t call the law if you want to live past tomorrow.
If this evokes some dread, it's meant to, as rural noir
works to defuse the myth of the bucolic countryside and expose a hard place of increasingly rusty edges and disposable existences. It's now a world of damaged men
and wounded women who at one time might have been farmers or have found jobs in mills
or factories. However, the family farm has given way to factory farming, while mills
and manufacturing plants are shuttered and derelict. All that remains is economic
insecurity, fraying community bonds, anarchic family structures, and the fearful
aftershocks of crime.
Rural noir’s stories are often seeded in criminal happenings, though at their core they're as
much about self and family identity and how people can lose their way and go
wrong even while trying to do the right thing. But drug addiction, family grievances, and domestic
violence leave wounds that won’t heal and struggles against poverty and fate end
in despair and a life sentence of grief. Though ills may be vanquished, a stinging sense of betrayal and distrust lingers.
Gritty crime tales with backwoods settings are part of the traditional and lasting material of American noir fiction and film noir. One of the earliest and still-best examples of country noir is James Ross’ They Don’t Dance Much, published in 1940, which put a country spin on James M. Cain. Later, several of Jim Thompson’s fearsome tales, such as The Killer Inside Me (1952) and Pop. 1280 (1964), with their portrayals of depraved small-town lawmen, would find their way to the screen.
Opening the door wide for contemporary rural noir was Daniel Woodrell, whose 2006 novel Winter’s Bone, released as a film in
2010, defined both a style and sensibility now most associated with a modern genre unto itself. Woodrell’s stories of criminals trapped by their violent
compulsions developed out of necessity are intimate and poetic and carry genuine
emotional weight. Despite the social and economic malaise clawing at the
viscera of the rural heartland, these works stay close to the local and the personal.
The same can be said of the twenty-five films below. Tense,
atmospheric, and unsettling, these sinister, slow-burning tales possess a stark elegance, even at their most violent. While themes of government
corruption or "big" corporate malfeasance might have been
herded into the room like elephants, they never are. These films’ dark attractions reside solely in austere, contained narratives that
focus on individual, more private transgressions -- the sins of which lie at the very
heart of noir.
Note: The Coen brothers’ No Country for Old Men (2007)
is not among the films listed below, only because by now it's “a film that needs no
introduction”.
1. SHOTGUN STORIES (2007)
REVIEW: THE CHICAGO READER
2. FROZEN RIVER
REVIEW: TIME OUT
3. DON MCKAY (2009)
REVIEW: ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY
4. WINTER'S BONE (2010)
REVIEW: TIME OUT
5.THE KILLER INSIDE ME (2010)
REVIEW: SYDNEY MORNING HERALD
6. RED, WHITE AND BLUE (2010)
REVIEW:NEW YORK TIMES
WARNING: EXTREME VIOLENCE
7. SMALL TOWN MURDER SONGS (2010)
REVIEW: THE VILLAGE VOICE
8.KILLER JOE (2011)
REVIEW: THE VILLAGE VOICE
9. DEADFALL (2011)
REVIEW: ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
10. THIN ICE (2011)
REVIEW: ROGEREBERT.COM
11. AIN'T THEM BODIES SAINTS (2013)
REVIEW: STREAMONDEMAND
12. OUT OF THE FURNACE (2013)
REVIEW: NEWSDAY
13. BAD TURN WORSE (2013)
REVIEW: NEW YORK TIMES
14.BLUE RUIN (2013)
REVIEW: WASHINGTON POST
15. A SINGLE SHOT (2013)
REVIEW: THE VILLAGE VOICE
16. JOE (2013)
REVIEW: ROLLING STONE
17. NED RIFLE (2014)
REVIEW: SAN DIEGO READER
18. CUT BANK (2014)
REVIEW: THE VILLAGE VOICE
19. COLD IN JULY (2014)
REVIEW: STAR TRIBUNE
20. BIG MUDDY (2014)
REVIEW: GLOBE AND MAIL
21. UNCLE JOHN (2015)
REVIEW: THE VILLAGE VOICE
22. LOST IN THE SUN (2015)
REVIEW: BLU-RAY.COM
23. COP CAR (2015)
REVIEW: TORONTO SUN
24. TWO STEP (2015)
REVIEW: THE VILLAGE VOICE
25. HELL OR HIGH WATER (2016)
REVIEW: NATIONAL POST
Gary Deane
A splendidly useful compilation -- many thanks! I'd add Briar Patch (2003), although it's a bit earlier than the others you've selected.
ReplyDeleteGlad to help. And thanks for mentioning of BRIAR PATCH aka PLAIN DIRTY. Also very much worth watching.
DeleteGreat post, Gary! I haven't seen all of these!
ReplyDeleteHey, thank you.
DeleteGreat compilation. Lots of time and effort must go into producing this high quality result. I've captured the list and will take a look.
ReplyDeleteWalter
Haven't seen Hell or High Water yet, but I will. They just keep comin' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guFyYjxyOY4 is another soon. Excellent post.
ReplyDeleteSteve, thanks very much. These films just don't get enough attention. Cheers.
DeleteHell or High Water is just great. Saw it tonight. BTW, I linked to your blog in my piece on The Red House.
DeleteGary, we watched "A Single Shot" and were well entertained thanks to your Rural Noir list.
ReplyDeleteWalter
As always, top notch work my good fellow!
ReplyDelete