[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by Rob Instigator

everyone learns? Learns what?????

I hate "slice-of-life" movies, especially indie ones where there is no real plot and only endless scenes of people making anguished faces remembering bullshit we are supposed to care about. wrapped up? are you crazy man? that kid witnessed a fucking slaughterbloodbath, his hobo friend gets killed (as far as he knows), his life is over as he knows it, and all is cool cuz there are cute girls in the apartments he moves into with his mom?
the subplot of his folks divorcing? jesus christ what a load of shit.
Fuck everyone in that movie. Fuck a movie set in the backwoods of texarkana border that includes absolutely no black folks or hispanic folks.

Pointless navel-gazing. I can't stand that shit.
The best character was the main kid's friend, and the whole weak ass subplot of his uncle and shit was pointless.

It tried hard to be about something and was about nothing.

Everytime I think about it I hate myself more and more for wasting 2 hours of my day off in this drivel.

haaa haaaa haaa

your rants are hilarious.

that doesn't make them true for me though, but i enjoy the comedy.

that wasn't the story.

********** WARNING SPOILERS *************

the story was ellis the next mud in the making. old-school romantic who lives in the river, ready to fight for a lady's honor, gets used and abused by women who play that angle. the girl the boy kisses is older/more experience and is just toying with him. same shit with mud, as blankenship explains.

mud learns to finally call it quits.

the kid...?

the kid who "ain't no townie" finally learns to accept that his old life is getting torn apart, and to stop idealizing/romanticizing the "one" girl that he "loves".

acceptance of change is learning.

the girls outside his mom's apartment don't mean "all is cool", they mean "you don't need to cling to the user/abuser who plays with you". of course it also means "oh... girls..." because he's 14/15 with a brain full of semen (haven't we all been there?)

the divorce is a metaphor for the rip in history of the PLACE. the mother wants city, the father wants a riverboat, they cannot stay together. the houses get torn down. the life that they've had for generations is over. the apartments are new and shiny. life changes, history moves "forward," individuals have to live through them.

and mud and his girl are sort of the same thing-- mud lives in the island, the girl lives in the motel, they can't stay together. theme & variations. like music.

and the struggle of the river life vs. the city is the old nature vs. civilization-- since gilgamesh and enkidu.

the divorce is also the propellant for him to really go after this "true love" shit that his parents are failing at-- it provides him with motivation to overvalue his "romantic" attachments in the face of domestic failure.

the old man blankenship who left civilization must at the end go deeper into nature to help his wildling son. he wanted quiet at the edge but he has to give it up and help mud go back to where he came from and he's not being hunted.

it's all really very carefully constructed, and yes, real life doesn't work like that, first act, second act, third act, theme and variations, but to request journalistic/scientific realism from movies is what hitchcock called moronic logic.

the movie works, and it does so beautifully. good writing, acting, camera, everything. there is no pointless navel gazing except the one i think you're projecting onto it.

************** END SPOILERS *************