It just seemed like more than a week went by between the beating and the hand retrieval, but that is probably not the case.
It’s been a few months since I’ve seen it, but I think it was only a few days.
The character’s in a haze, but it had to be less than a week or they’d have begun the process of seizing the house.
When you sign a bail bond you sign away pretty much every right you ever had: the bondsman can come inside your home without a warrant for example. The laws vary from state to state, but in some a bail bondsman who’s been given property as collateral doesn’t have to go through the same foreclosure process or eviction procedures as a bank or landlord would- it’s more of an “I’m here, this place is in my name thanks to your sorry ass dad, now get the hell out” title pawn kind of process. (Within reason- obviously they can’t pick up mom and the kids and toss them out the window without repercussion, but it’s not a matter of a long legal process either.)
Good movie. Grim, but with an inoffensive upbeat ending.
Regarding the old-timey jam session: Yeah, such things occur in the Ozarks (and elsewhere) but any other kind of music would have been less trite.
Show tunes, roots rocks, popular jazz, novelty songs, or American songbook would have been just as likely to be heard at a teacher’s birthday party. Any of those styles would have provided a believable and interesting contrast between the meth culture and the local educated society.
It wasn’t the teacher’s birthday party though, it was the birthday of the character who was singing, and she was singing exactly the kind of music a character like that would be singing (in the movie and of course, in real life).
I understand Dio’s point that maybe being stoic is not Christof Waltz level “ACTING” heavy lifting, but within the spare boundaries that the role called for she did “stoic” pitch perfect in line with requirements of the role. Sometimes less is more and she hit the mark re the characterization.
I didn’t quite get the Mom’s catatonia in being able to fold laundry, but being otherwise non-communicative. Is this organic or PTSD or what? Is there some interior life going on in these scenarios or is there really no one home?
The uncle “Teardrop” WAS a masterful job of big “A” acting.
One thing I didn’t quite get.
It’s obvious in the last scene that Teardrop is going to kill and probably be killed to revenge his brother’s murder. But … and I didn’t quite get this plot point…I was under the impression he had kinda/sorta made a truce with the deadly patriarch’s clan in the barn beating scene, even agreeing that his brother got what he deserved, and then later explaining to his niece the logic of why her father more or less NEEDED to die for being a snitch. But then at the end he was all about revenge.
It’s been a few months, but an off the wall theory has occurred to me about the ending:
Could Teardrop himself have been the one who killed Jessup? Could he have been pressured into it somehow, even thought on some level it was ok, and now the guilt was going to drive him to kill himself?
Now that I write it, it looks kind of stupid.
That’s an interesting theory, but I don’t think there is anything in the movie to support it. If that were the case, Teardrop could have just led Ree to the body himself. It wouldn’t make sense that Milton and his gang would have known where the body was.
Good point. Theory busted.
[QUOTE=astro]
It’s obvious in the last scene that Teardrop is going to kill and probably be killed to revenge his brother’s murder. But … and I didn’t quite get this plot point…I was under the impression he had kinda/sorta made a truce with the deadly patriarch’s clan in the barn beating scene, even agreeing that his brother got what he deserved, and then later explaining to his niece the logic of why her father more or less NEEDED to die for being a snitch. But then at the end he was all about revenge.
[/QUOTE]
I think that
[spoiler]1- It just gnawed away at him- he was initially content to leave it be since his brother broke the Ozark Omerta and all but the “damn it, he was my brother!” faction in his mind ultimately battered away at him til he decided family vengeance came first.
2- I think he figured out who the trigger man was. Impossible for the home audience to do this, but I think it was one thing so long as it was a ‘one of Thump’s boys did it on Thump’s order’ but another when he realized ‘It was Buster Leroy (or whoever) that actually did the deed’, then the eye for an eye thing sets in.
[/spoiler]
Also, Teardrop did a lot of drugs that were bound to skew his thinking.
Regarding the mother’s illness: I don’t think it was catatonia as much as being zombied out on prescription psychotropic medications. In the book she went through periods of promiscuity when her husband was in prison- one of her kids was fathered by another man- and during these periods she’d pretty much abandon the kids and may show up beaten to hell and back a few days later
The book also makes it clear she was a user of her husband’s product, which couldn’t help. She could be bipolar and what you’re seeing in the movie is the side effects of drugs coupled with a depressive episode.