Thunder Road

An American film. Jim is a police officer. His mother has died and he is giving the eulogy. The film opens with that speech, shot as a single take. The man starts, comes apart, pulls himself together, comes apart again; he tries to play a song, it does not play, and in that gap he starts to dance. The scene is held long and the audience does not know where to look. From there the film is about a collapse. A divorce case is going on, his relationship with his daughter is broken, he makes mistakes at work and cannot hold his temper. What the narrative is interested in is not grief but language: the man cannot say what he feels, and every attempt produces something ridiculous. The film keeps that ridiculousness and the pain in the same scene. The side line is his daughter. The little girl sees the state her father is in and does not know how to behave toward him. The production is small. Low budget, few locations, a small cast. Its starting point was a short. The same eulogy was first made as a thirteen-minute film, won a festival prize and was widely watched online; the feature was grown from that scene. Jim Cummings plays Jim; he also wrote, directed and edited it. Who it is for: anyone who likes American independent cinema and films that hold embarrassment and pain together. Who it is not for: anyone looking for an easy watch; the narrative is constantly uncomfortable and rescues its character nowhere.