Midnight Special
How far would
you go to protect your child? What if saving him meant letting him go? Jeff
Nichols’ brilliant “Midnight Special” weaves relatable themes of parental
responsibility and faith in that which is traditionally unexplainable into a
sci-fi road movie, with echoes of John Carpenter, Steven Spielberg, and Stephen
King bouncing throughout. So many modern blockbusters err on the side of
hand-holding, underlining their plots and character motivations with consistent
expository dialogue or overly defined narration. There’s this bizarre concern
by Hollywood that audiences will rebel if they don’t fully understand what’s
going on at every given moment, and so characters talk to themselves,
motivations are spelled out in voiceover, and everyone, especially in action
movies, speaks of what they have to do and why they have to do it. “Midnight
Special” respects your intelligence, letting you come to its themes emotionally
instead of narratively. It is a breathtaking display of visual storytelling,
confidently rendered by someone who understands the power of cinema.
Nichols, who
also wrote the film, plunges us into the action of the piece immediately. Two
men—Roy (Michael Shannon, who has appeared in every Nichols film) and Lucas
(Joel Edgerton)—are in a motel room, watching a news story about a manhunt
involving a kidnapped boy. The boy is in between the two beds in the room,
reading comic books with a flashlight. His name is Alton (Jaeden Lieberher),
and he’s special. He’s so special that an entire religious sect has sprouted up
around him, led by Calvin Meyer (Sam Shepard). As Roy and Lucas flee into the
night with Alton in the backseat and wearing night vision goggles so they can
turn off their headlights to make themselves harder to spot, Calvin’s compound
is raided. It turns out everyone is looking for Alton.
The FBI brings
in a specialist to meet with Calvin’s flock named Paul Sevier (Adam Driver),
trying to figure what they know about the boy and exactly what this golden
child means to them. It turns out that the cult of Alton worships numeric
sequences that the potential prophet has been revealing to them. It also turns
out that these numeric sequences mean something to the government, and they
want to know how a child knew them. Finally, the numbers seem to be pointing
Alton, Roy and Lucas to a specific location. Lucas is one of the recently
converted—through a special power that Alton has to convey something
transcendent through beams that shoot from his eye—but Roy's devotion is purely
parental. Both men need to get Alton there in time; nothing will stop them.
The drive of
Roy, Alton’s father, is made clear in an early scene in which the trio
encounters a state trooper. He sees their license plate and looks like he’s
about to call it in when Roy and Lucas draw on him. Is their mission important
enough to kill a cop? Roy’s drive to do what he thinks he needs to be done for
his son is motivated by the passion of fatherhood, but is Lucas’ purpose as
committed? And how will Alton’s mother, played by Kirsten Dunst, respond?
“Midnight Special” is masterful in the way it keeps answering questions and
then asking new ones, always staying one step ahead of the viewer. It’s a
testament to Nichols’ direction that we trust that we are in the hands of a
master, willing to take the journey wherever it may lead us.
And the final
destination for that journey, while I would never spoil it, is surprisingly
emotionally resonant. Alton being “special” could easily be read as an allegory
for a sick child, one who is not like the others and needs a different kind of
care and attention; one who is special in a way that only parents who have
dealt with that kind of pain and loss could understand. There is also an
undeniable story of faith buried in “Midnight Special”—about believing in
something unseen, something greater than ourselves. Much of this emotional
undercurrent falls on the shoulders of Nichols’ cast, especially the driven,
subtle performance from Michael Shannon, although he’s matched by great work from
Dunst, Edgerton, Driver, and the rest of the cast.
“Midnight
Special” also relies on essential contributions from cinematographer Adam Stone
(who has worked with Nichols on all of his films) and composer David Wingo.
Stone captures the natural world almost as another character (as he did in
“Take Shelter” and “Mud”) and makes a work of art out of a sequence that hinges
on a sunrise. Nichols and Stone's compositions are completed by Wingo’s score,
which often drives us to the film’s emotions as it goes daringly dialogue-free
for large chunks of the action.
In the end,
that’s what I take away from “Midnight Special”—the power of visual
storytelling. It is images from the film that pass through my mind most—flames
falling from the sky, a father carrying his child, the shaking of grass as
something is about to happen, and the jaw-dropping finale. Nichols is the rare
filmmaker who understands that this is what we take away from the best films,
and the powerful way that art reflects that which transcends words: a father's
dedication, the pain of a sick child, belief in something greater than
ourselves. Sure, we quote our favorite lines and do impressions of characters,
but it is the pictures that haunt us, that linger in our mind, and that stay
with us. Sometimes forever.
