Shotgun Stories

In a town in Arkansas there are two sets of brothers by the same father. He abandoned his first family, stopped drinking, remarried and was a good father to the second. When he dies, the eldest of the first family speaks at the funeral and says what he thinks of him. What follows is a feud. The subject is not revenge but the fact that knowing how stupid a fight is does not stop it. None of the brothers wants it and all of them continue; each reprisal answers the last and nobody remembers the first move. The form is slow and hot: cotton fields, a fish farm, open air. The camera keeps its distance and the violence is mostly outside the frame or shown after it is over. It is Jeff Nichols' first feature; he wrote it out of the region where he grew up and shot it in Arkansas. The budget was tiny and the crew largely local. With this film Michael Shannon became a presence in every film Nichols made, and the two went on working together. Douglas Ligon and Barlow Jacobs play the other brothers. Who it is for: viewers who like slow American rural drama and quiet tension. Who it is not for: anyone wanting pace; this is almost entirely waiting and not speaking.