The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Jeff Nichols · a film · 2016 · the theatrical release, about 112 minutes · written and directed by Jeff Nichols
Mode
A chase film and a film of wonder played at a low register, its exposition cut away; a father’s drama inside a genre of visitation
Mythos
The child of power pursued by the state and claimed by a church: the nativity and the flight into Egypt, inverted, the parents returning the child to his own world rather than keeping him for this one; an official who comes to believe, as a Magus
Phase
Some days of flight, from a motel room at night to a set place and date on the Gulf coast, with a short coda in custody
Presentation
Feature film in colour, widescreen, in English, about 112 minutes; photography by Adam Stone, music by David Wingo; Michael Shannon, Joel Edgerton, Kirsten Dunst, Jaeden Lieberher, Adam Driver and Sam Shepard, with Bill Camp and Scott Haze
Register
Dark and quiet night driving, procedural and flat, broken by sudden heights of terror and transport; a dawn held in two men’s faces; at the end a full vision
Scale
One family and a friend who becomes kin, one religious community, two agencies of the state, and a world laid over ours
Governing Proposition
A father and his oldest friend drive by night, headlights off, with a boy who cannot bear the light, pursued by the religious community that made a scripture of his words and by the state that wants to know what he is. The wager of the film is that withholding what the boy is, and letting the audience learn it at the rate his pursuers do, makes the viewer share a father’s faith before understanding, and that a parent’s love can be shown as a labour of delivery that ends in handing the child over to a life the parent cannot share.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
A motel room, its windows covered over with cardboard. On the television a news report gives an Amber Alert: a boy has been taken, and the men who took him are named. On the bed the boy reads a comic book by flashlight, wearing goggles. By night the men take him out to the car and drive with the headlights off, on night vision, down a dark highway. The film begins in the middle of the flight and explains nothing.
The men are Roy Tomlin, the boy’s father, played by Michael Shannon, and Lucas, a Texas state trooper and Roy’s friend since childhood, played by Joel Edgerton. The boy is Alton Meyer, played by Jaeden Lieberher. What the audience learns, it learns by action. The cardboard, the goggles and the dark road tell that the boy cannot bear the light and that the men will break the law for him, before a word explains either, and every scene after this one earns its information the same way.
Jeff Nichols wrote and directed the film, his fourth feature after Shotgun Stories, Take Shelter and Mud, with Adam Stone photographing and David Wingo writing the music. It premiered in competition at the Berlin International Film Festival in February 2016 and was released in the United States by Warner Bros. in March 2016. It runs about 112 minutes, in the theatrical release, in colour and widescreen. To begin in flight is the film’s first decision and its governing one: the viewer is committed before understanding, as Roy is.
Movement II
The FBI raids the Ranch, a religious community whose head is Calvin Meyer, played by Sam Shepard. Its sermons are built from numbers and words the boy spoke in fits, so that a child’s utterances have become a scripture. Calvin sends two of his men, played by Bill Camp and Scott Haze, after the boy.
Paul Sevier, an analyst of the National Security Agency, played by Adam Driver, interrogates the members of the Ranch. The film now holds three readings of the boy side by side: the sect’s worship, the state’s seizure and the father’s love. The first two are required, since without them the third would have nothing to stand against, and the film keeps all three moving at the pace of the chase.
The pattern under them is old. A child of power is pursued by the state and claimed by a church: the nativity, and the flight into Egypt. Sevier, the official who will come to believe, is a Magus from the agency. The two outer readings are drawn thinly, the Ranch through a raid, a sermon and two pursuers, the state through one analyst and some assemblies of agents, and they stay emblems beside the family, which is the film’s load-bearing structure.
Movement III
At a petrol station by night the boy’s eyes flare, and the sky rains down the fragments of a satellite onto the forecourt. It is terror made beautiful and sudden, and it is earned by the quiet around it: the long dark drives, the scenes of waiting in cars and rooms. The film rises in this way several times, and each height is set against a ground of plain procedure.
Stone photographs the night in the blue and amber of motels and petrol stations and in the dark interiors of cars, and the photography is used rather than displayed: the boy’s need for darkness becomes the film’s own medium. Wingo’s score of synthesiser and strings is restrained, and it carries the turn to wonder without swelling. The cutting keeps the chase tight while letting the scenes of watching run long.
The flight reaches the safe house of Sarah Tomlin, the boy’s mother, played by Kirsten Dunst. Roy keeps watch over a sleeping son whose strength is failing. Here the film’s meaning comes into the open: to love a child is to protect him toward a life you cannot share. Roy’s flight is a labour of delivery, not of keeping, and Shannon’s fierce quiet makes it felt rather than said.
Movement IV
In a field at sunrise the boy stands in the sun he has hidden from, and shows Lucas and Roy what he is. His eyes pour out a light the two men can barely stand, and the passage is held in their faces, Shannon’s and Edgerton’s, more than in the light. It is the film’s best passage of transport, and the formal hinge on which the night of the first three movements turns to day and faith becomes sight.
Alton tells them of a people living on a world laid over ours. Lieberher plays the boy with an unchildlike calm, and Edgerton plays Lucas’s loyalty as slowly converted, the friend becoming kin. The film has withheld the boy’s nature for half its length, and the audience has learnt it at the rate the pursuers have; that sharing of Roy’s condition is what the form knows.
The boy is captured, and in custody he shows Sevier the same light. Driver plays Sevier finely, and his wonder gives the state’s reading of the boy a human face; but here he is also partly a device of exposition, and the film begins to explain what it had withheld. The other world, so far carried by faces and by light, is given in one speech.
Movement V
The last movement is a run to a set place and date on the Gulf coast. There a city of luminous structures appears over the land, seen by everyone, grand in scale. The boy walks into it, with his mother present, and it is gone. A short coda in custody follows, and adds little that the arrival did not hold.
The arrival is where the film’s law strains. Until now the extraordinary has been met by ordinary people at ground level: a satellite on a petrol station, a light in a farmer’s field, the state as a man with a notebook. At the end the other world is shown whole and in digital effects, the witnesses become spectators, and what had been held in faces and light becomes spectacle. The swerve of register gives back to the inherited form the full reveal it had refused.
What the film made is one of the cleaner instances in its decade of the wonder film of the late 1970s played at a low register, with an adult’s grief at its centre and its exposition removed: a decade that returned broadly to that wonder, and that this film joined rather than led. It survives whole, with a steady but narrow following, and is read beside Take Shelter as a study of a father’s belief. What holds it in Tier III and below Tier IV is an ending that resolves into spectacle, a reach still slight after ten years, and the sect and the state kept as emblems beside a family held in full.
Act III · The Twelve
The film’s economy is its best claim, and a strong one. It opens in mid flight and refuses exposition, so that every scene earns its information by action: the cardboard on the motel windows, the goggles and the comic book read by flashlight, the headlights switched off on a dark highway tell that the boy cannot bear light and that the men will break the law for him before a word explains either. The Ranch and the state are required, since they are the two readings of the boy the film sets beside the father’s: worship and seizure against love. What gives: Sevier serves partly as a device of exposition in the fourth movement, and the coda adds little the arrival did not hold.
Score: 7.8 / 10
The meaning the film brings into the open is the parent’s: to love a child is to protect him toward a life you cannot share, and the protection ends in handing him over. Roy’s whole flight is a labour of delivery, not of keeping, and the best scenes, the father’s watch over a sleeping son whose strength is failing and the mother’s acceptance at the end, make it felt rather than said. It is shown as a condition that holds, through image and performance, and that lifts the axis above mood. What holds it: the disclosure is single and already known, and the misreadings set against it, the sect’s and the state’s, are drawn without much depth.
Score: 7.5 / 10
The film rises several times, and its peaks are earned by the quiet around them. The petrol station, where the night sky rains fragments of a satellite, is terror made beautiful and sudden. The sunrise in the field, where the boy’s eyes pour out a light the men can barely stand, is the film’s best passage of transport, held in Shannon’s and Edgerton’s faces. The final apparition, a city of luminous structures standing over the coastal land, is grand in scale. The height is real and recurs. What holds the axis is the last of them: shown in full and in digital effects, what had been held in faces and light becomes spectacle, and the summit is slightly spent.
Score: 7.6 / 10
The archetypal pattern is built at the centre. The child of power pursued by the state and claimed by a church is the nativity and the flight into Egypt; the Ranch makes a scripture of his words, and Sevier, the official who comes to believe, is a Magus from the agency. The film inverts the pattern with care: the parents do not keep the child for the world but return him to his own, and the coming is a departure. The bond of father and son is the load-bearing structure, and the light-sensitive child behind goggles is a strong particular image. What holds the axis: the sect and the state stay emblems, and at its edges the pattern is allusive rather than built.
Score: 7.7 / 10
The lineage is open: Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, and the road and chase film of the 1970s. The departure is one of register. The film plays that inheritance with the withheld information, the procedural flatness and the Southern working-class textures of Nichols’s earlier films, so that wonder arrives among motels, safe houses and two-lane roads, and the genre’s explanatory scenes are cut away. That is a real turn with a real cost, since it denies the audience the orientation the genre promises. What holds the axis: the wager was placed on a proven path, and the last movement returns to the inherited form, the full reveal and the luminous other world.
Score: 7.2 / 10
The form knows something. To begin in flight, and to let the audience learn the boy’s nature at the rate his pursuers do, makes the viewer share Roy’s condition: committed before understanding, acting on faith in a child whose meaning is withheld. The night drives, shot dark and quiet, make the boy’s need for darkness the film’s own medium, and the turn from night to the dawn in the field is the formal hinge on which faith becomes sight. Told as an explained, linear story, the film would lose its knowledge of what it is to serve someone you do not understand. What holds the axis: at the end showing replaces withholding, and the last movement could belong to any film of its kind.
Score: 7.8 / 10
Ten years is a short record, and the axis is in part a forecast. What can be shown is real. A second viewing rewards, because the withheld facts, once known, reveal how much each early scene carries: the cardboard, the comic book, Lucas’s silence. The strand of father and son reads differently once the end is known. The film is read beside Take Shelter as a study of a father’s belief, and it supports readings of faith, of the sect and of the state. What holds the axis: the mysteries are mostly resolved by the end, the other world shown and explained in one speech, and a work that answers its question leaves less to return to.
Score: 7.3 / 10
The field is the cinema of the 2010s. The intrinsic force is moderate and real: the film shows that the wonder film of the late 1970s can be made at a low register, with an adult’s grief at its centre and its exposition removed, and it is one of the cleaner instances of that idea in its decade. It refines what the genre can do; it does not reorganise it. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: a respected work by a respected director, in a decade whose broad return to the wonder of that earlier cinema it joined rather than led, with no line of later films shown to take its manner from it. What holds the axis is that reach, still slight after ten years.
Score: 6.9 / 10
Survival is weighed on form, presence and fabric, across ten years. The film survives whole: the theatrical release, unaltered, in a recent and complete recording on disc and streaming. Ten years demonstrate far less than decades, and the figure stands within what that span allows. Presence is modest: a small release, and a steady but narrow following among viewers of the genre and of its director, with no wide continuous presence to credit. The surface is charged slightly: the closing digital effects are the element most fixed to their moment, and they carry the climax. Form whole, presence modest, one fixed surface: the figure sits a little below the usual one for its span.
Score: 7.5 / 10
The command is real and consistent. Adam Stone’s night photography, the headlights off, the blue and amber of motels and petrol stations, the dark interiors of cars, gives the film its texture and is used, not displayed. David Wingo’s restrained score of synthesiser and strings carries the turn to wonder without swelling. The cutting keeps the chase tight while letting scenes of watching run long. Nichols directs his actors to great effect: Shannon’s fierce quiet, Edgerton’s slowly converted loyalty and Lieberher’s unchildlike calm make faces carry what the script withholds. The costs: the ending’s effects, which lose the film’s material sense, and a few scenes of exposition, the Ranch sermon and Sevier’s interviews, functional rather than made.
Score: 7.8 / 10
Take the two most distant elements: the opening motel room, dark and procedural, and the closing city of light over the coast. One law governs most of the film: the extraordinary is met by ordinary people at ground level. The satellite falls on a petrol station, the boy’s light floods a field at a farmer’s dawn, and the state’s response is a man with a notebook. The family, the sect and the state answer to it, across a range from road thriller to vision. What holds the axis: the end obeys a different physics, the spectacle film’s, in which the other world is shown whole and the witnesses become spectators; and the sect and the state stay at a lower density than the family.
Score: 7.6 / 10
Judged on what a film of under two hours holds. The family: a father, a mother, a son and a friend who becomes kin, held fully and the structure’s centre. The sacred: a community’s scripture, with the boy as its object. The state: the FBI and the National Security Agency. And a cosmos beyond ours, a people living on a world laid over this one. They are joined in one chase, with economy. What holds the axis lowest of the twelve: the orders beyond the family are present more than held, the Ranch drawn through a raid, a sermon and two pursuers, the state through one analyst, the other world through one speech and one vision; labour, history and the South it crosses are textures, not orders it takes up.
Score: 6.7 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
7.5 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier III · Major
Strongest Dimensions
The Inevitable, The Living Form and The Made at 7.8, then The Archetypal Deep at 7.7. A film that opens in mid flight and lets every scene earn its information by action; a form that makes the viewer share a father’s faith before understanding, turned on the hinge of a dawn; night photography, a restrained score and faces that carry what the script withholds; and a nativity inverted, the child returned to his own world rather than kept for this one.
Limiting Dimension
The Encompassed at 6.7: the family held in full, and the sect, the state and the other world present more than held, with labour, history and the South it crosses as textures. Then Pressure on Tradition at 6.9, a moderate force and a reach still slight, a return to an earlier wonder that the decade broadly shared; and The Swerve at 7.2, a turn of register on a proven path, given back to the inherited form in the last movement.
The Necessity Cap clears at 7.8 against a threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor clears: The Living Form at 7.8, The Made at 7.8, The Inner Law at 7.6, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet on all five: The Archetypal Deep at 7.7, The Unconcealment at 7.5, The Imperishable at 7.5, The Swerve at 7.2 and Pressure on Tradition at 6.9 each fall short of the bar of 8.5. The Universal Minimum is unmet at Pressure on Tradition, 6.9, The Swerve, 7.2, and The Bottomless Well, 7.3, all below 7.5; The Encompassed, which it exempts, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 6.7. Three of the five summit conditions are met. The work stands where its aggregate places it: 7.5, in the band of Tier III, short of the 8.0 at which Tier IV begins and of the 9.0 that the summit requires. What holds it below Tier IV is a slight reach, a turn of register given back at the end, an ending that resolves into spectacle, and orders beyond the family drawn as emblems.
Basis · a reading from knowledge of Midnight Special in its theatrical release of 2016, in colour, widescreen, in English, about 112 minutes, from the motel room to the coda: written and directed by Jeff Nichols, photographed by Adam Stone, with music by David Wingo; with Michael Shannon, Joel Edgerton, Kirsten Dunst, Jaeden Lieberher, Adam Driver and Sam Shepard, and Bill Camp and Scott Haze. It premiered in competition at the Berlin International Film Festival in February 2016 and was released in the United States by Warner Bros. in March 2016. No print, screenplay or recording was consulted, and the running time is given as approximate. The design, the order of the movements, the principal set pieces and the ending are known well; shot-level detail and the wording of the dialogue less well, and no line is quoted. Facts that could not be verified, among them the budget and the takings, the places of shooting, the film stock, the editor, the use of the song the title names, the exact site of the arrival, the events of the roadside shooting and scene counts, are not given.