Sunday 11 September 2016

RURAL NOIR: TAKING REFUGE



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' has long been associated with the metropolis and 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 of all shapes and sizes have more recently become precincts of gentrified vibrancy and creative wonderfulness, much of both film and literary noir has since packed its bags and headed for the rural heartland where responses to matters at hand are not always as ‘nuanced’ or ‘mindful’ as city folks might like. 

Welcome to the land of Rural Noir AKA Country Noir, a world that feels 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 bother calling the law if you want to live past tomorrow.  
  
If this evokes a certain amount of dread, it's meant to, as rural noir works to defuse the myth of the bucolic countryside and expose a hard place of rusty edges and disposable existences. More recently,  country noir has become populated with damaged men and wounded women who at one time might have been farmers or have found jobs in mills or factories. But the family farm has given way to factory farming, while mills and manufacturing plants are shuttered. What’s left is economic insecurity, fraying community bonds, anarchic family structures, and the fearful aftershocks of crime.

Rural noir’s stories are often seeded in horrific criminal happenings, though at their core, they are 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 noir fiction and film noir. One of the earliest and still-best examples of rural 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 modern country noir. 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 rural America, these works stay close to the local and the personal.

Similar can be said of the twenty-five films below. Tense, atmospheric and unsettling, these are sinister, slow-burning tales that possess a stark elegance, even at their most violent. While the themes of government corruption, political opportunism, and corporate malfeasance might have been herded like elephants into the room, they weren't. Much of these films’ dark attraction resides in their austere, contained narratives that focus on individual or 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 it’s “a film that needs no introduction”.
  

1. SHOTGUN STORIES (2007)

OFFICIAL TRAILER
REVIEW: THE CHICAGO READER

2. FROZEN RIVER

OFFICIAL TRAILER
REVIEW: TIME OUT

3. DON MCKAY (2009)

OFFICIAL TRAILER
REVIEW: ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY

4. WINTER'S BONE (2010)

OFFICIAL TRAILER
REVIEW: TIME OUT

5.THE KILLER INSIDE ME (2010)

OFFICIAL TRAILER
REVIEW: SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

6. RED, WHITE AND BLUE (2010)

OFFICIAL TRAILER
REVIEW:NEW YORK TIMES
WARNING: EXTREME VIOLENCE 


7. SMALL TOWN MURDER SONGS (2010)

OFFICAL TRAILER
REVIEW: THE VILLAGE VOICE

8.KILLER JOE (2011)

OFFICIAL TRAILER
REVIEW: THE VILLAGE VOICE

9. DEADFALL (2011)

OFFICIAL TRAILER
REVIEW: ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH

10. THIN ICE (2011)

OFFICIAL TRAILER
REVIEW: ROGEREBERT.COM


11. AIN'T THEM BODIES SAINTS (2013)

OFFICIAL TRAILER
REVIEW: STREAMONDEMAND

12. OUT OF THE FURNACE (2013)

OFFICIAL TRAILER
REVIEW: NEWSDAY

13. BAD TURN WORSE (2013)

OFFICIAL TRAILER
REVIEW: NEW YORK TIMES

14.BLUE RUIN (2013)

OFFICIAL TRAILER
REVIEW: WASHINGTON POST

15. A SINGLE SHOT (2013)

OFFICIAL TRAILER
REVIEW: THE VILLAGE VOICE

16. JOE (2013)

OFFICIAL TRAILER
REVIEW: ROLLING STONE


17. NED RIFLE (2014)

OFFICIAL TRAILER
REVIEW: SAN DIEGO READER

18. CUT BANK (2014)

OFFICIAL TRAILER
REVIEW: THE VILLAGE VOICE

19. COLD IN JULY (2014)

OFFICIAL TRAILER
REVIEW: STAR TRIBUNE

20. BIG MUDDY (2014)

OFFICIAL TRAILER
REVIEW: GLOBE AND MAIL

21. UNCLE JOHN (2015)

OFFICIAL TRAILER
REVIEW: THE VILLAGE VOICE

22. LOST IN THE SUN (2015)

OFFICIAL TRAILER
REVIEW: BLU-RAY.COM

23. COP CAR (2015)

OFFICIAL TRAILER
REVIEW: TORONTO SUN

24. TWO STEP (2015)

OFFICIAL TRAILER
REVIEW: THE VILLAGE VOICE

25. HELL OR HIGH WATER (2016)

OFFICIAL TRAILER
REVIEW: NATIONAL POST


Gary Deane

10 comments:

  1. A splendidly useful compilation -- many thanks! I'd add Briar Patch (2003), although it's a bit earlier than the others you've selected.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Glad to help. And thanks for mentioning of BRIAR PATCH aka PLAIN DIRTY. Also very much worth watching.

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  2. Great post, Gary! I haven't seen all of these!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Great compilation. Lots of time and effort must go into producing this high quality result. I've captured the list and will take a look.
    Walter

    ReplyDelete
  4. 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.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Steve, thanks very much. These films just don't get enough attention. Cheers.

      Delete
    2. Hell or High Water is just great. Saw it tonight. BTW, I linked to your blog in my piece on The Red House.

      Delete
  5. Gary, we watched "A Single Shot" and were well entertained thanks to your Rural Noir list.
    Walter

    ReplyDelete
  6. As always, top notch work my good fellow!

    ReplyDelete

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