Good One
The most important things in life are what happen between the words, but it’s difficult to achieve this in movies especially if those subterranean moments consist of small shifts of consciousness where the character (and thus the audience) knows nothing will be the same afterwards. A film camera can capture thought, and yet so many films seem to doubt that: They’re full of airless talk, either exposition or explanation. What’s exceptional about India Donaldson’s “Good One” is how much she and her trio of actors James LeGros, Danny McCarthy and Lily Collias trust the subterranean, let it work below the surface among their characters.
Chris (Le Gros) and Matt (McCarthy) have been friends forever; they bicker like an old married couple. Chris is the responsible one, but his marriage has ended and he’s in an unwelcome state of middle aged chaos. Matt is a washed-up actor, an openly flailing disappointment. His teenage son couldn’t care less about him. Chris’ 17 year old daughter Sam (Collias) is a high school senior excitedly preparing for college in the fall; she’s a good kid with a bright future who loves her dad very much indeed. She had been looking forward to spending a weekend hiking in the Catskills with him, Matt and Matt’s son, when Matt’s son backs out at the last minute, Sam finds herself unaccompanied by her peer on this jaunt.
This is no casual afternoon walk; it’s a three day hike that involves carrying gear on one’s back and trekking long distances over sometimes difficult terrain. Chris and Sam know all the rituals involved with hiking. how to pack light but well-prepared; how to prevent blisters while walking in boots all day, which way to point your sleeping bag zipper so you won’t get cold at night. Matt does not know these things because he is a buffoon. He shows up for the trip wearing jeans and packs inappropriately; he can’t set up his tent because he didn’t know to bring the right kind of stakes; all of his gear has been loaned to him by Chris because Matt never bothered to buy any of his own hiking equipment, much less learn how to use it properly. Chris is rigid and critical, but their dynamic feels more like a habit than anything else Chris is always irritated with Matt, who tells jokes. His lightheartedness is a thin veneer over misery so deep it’s practically existential: “I don’t know how I became so untethered,” Matt says during a naked moment.
We see all this through Sam’s eyes. She is perceptive and thoughtful she surprises the two men with her insight into their grown-up problems when they ask her opinion. But something’s off about all this, Yes, Sam is 17 years old, but she’s still just a kid. These guys are intense for anyone to handle, let alone someone who shares DNA with one of them. They forget that she’s young; they forget that maybe getting tipsy around the campfire and swapping stories about infidelity isn’t what she needs to see right now. What starts out as nice (albeit chaotic) time rapidly turns not-so-nice at all in fact, there’s an increasingly palpable sense as the film goes on that Sam might not be safe with these two men whom she’s known her whole life.
What’s the matter now?
‘Good One’ is refreshing in its unconcern for answers. The film never ‘satisfies’ an audience with clear-cut explanations, or even cathartic moments, instead drawing them into its world a strange place that quickly becomes suffocatingly small. Sam has her period and keeps going off the path to put in a tampon as Chris and Sam wait in the background, totally oblivious to this additional inconvenience of hers. She has this whole other life going on they know nothing about. It’s an interesting detail, the period (every detail is interesting in this lovely film, which has such an evocative title), because it emphasizes difference biologically but also among people highlighting her aloneness when there are no other women around except back home somewhere while she’s out here alone.
I took a friend to a press screening of it and we walked home talking about it for hours afterward. There was so much to talk about, and I think that’s because nobody says what any of it “means.” Donaldson does not take the easy way out.
Most of the movie takes place outside. Cinematographer Wilson Cameron (who also shot two of Donaldson’s shorts) captures all that lush greenery; how bodies move through it, vistas. In some of these more intimate scenes he employs very aggressive framing where one head looms large in the foreground while another peeks out from behind blockage, characters are crammed into frame but also each others’ way. Sound design is exquisite: vivid sounds of rushing water, bugs, and birds replace dialogue; there are long sequences where we watch characters hike set up tents break down campsite It’s soothing rhythmically but there are things curdling beneath.
Most of the movie happens on Collias’ face. She is remarkable young actress who shows every flicker of thought discomfort humor shock Her face leads us. The subterranean shift is Sam’s, a tectonic plate moving deep below the surface of her life, it changes everything, forever, inside her. When she comes out of the woods she is not the same girl she was when she went in. Everything has changed.
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