Mud is the place where the earth meets the water. In a rural stretch of Arkansas, a few folks live in wooden shacks along the Mississippi, as comfortable on the river as on land. One of these is 14-year-old Ellis (Tye Sheridan), whose parents (played by Ray McKinnon and Sarah Paulson) have slipped into disharmony as they might sink into quicksand. Next door is Tom Blankenship (Sam Shepard), a tough coot and former military sharpshooter. And on an island offshore dwells a mysterious river god, or water demon, on the run from a murder warrant. He is played by Matthew McConaughey, and his name is Mud. The original screenplay by Arkansas native Jeff Nichols is also a classic coming-of-age story about Ellis’s need to escape his home, where marital tension reigns, and sail unknown waters to find adventure and, perhaps, his grown-up self. Mud, which played at last year’s Cannes Film Festival and is one of this year’s most impressive works, could be called a romantic melodrama. But it’s really a clear-eyed essay on the power of romance: in a man’s love for a woman — Mud’s for his sweetheart Juniper (Reese Witherspoon), whom he means to rescue — and a boy’s faith in that man. (READ: Richard Corliss on Jeff Nichols’ Take Shelter) Nineteenth-century literature, from Great Expectations to Huckleberry Finn, teaches that, when a boy befriends a man on the run from society, the boy is right and society is wrong. Ellis instinctively realizes that when he and his pal Neckbone (Jacob Lofland) visit a deserted island and discover a motorboat lodged high in a tree, the odd wreckage of some earlier violent storm. Mud, hiding there from bounty hunters hired by the dead man’s father (Joe Don Baker), embraces the boys as his posse and his go-betweens. He asks them to bring him tools to fix the boat, and food, and to deliver a letter to Juniper, who, he is sure, awaits him. Neckbone, Ellis’s age but still a kid at heart, harbors a healthy skepticism toward theImage may be NSFW.
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