Sebastin Silvas scathing, scorched-earth take on bro culture,code-switching and how best buddies double as bitter underminers kicks off with a mistake. Two guys are pushing their car down an upstate New York road, shooting the shit. One of them is waiting for his friends to come along and get them, since theyre all converging on a pals house in the Catskills for a long guys weekend. The other is essentially along for the ride, as his apartment back in Manhattan is filled with his girlfriends family. One of them, John (Christopher Abbott), is the white. The other, Tyler, (Mudbounds Jason Mitchell), is black.
Soon, a truck full of screaming, whooping yahoos drive up; the fact that the loudest of them is played by Caleb Landry Jones, so memorable as the twitchy, chest-thumping brother from Get Out (2017), sets you slightly on edge from the get-go. While Johns compadres exchange high fives and hugs, one of them greets the new guy as Tyrel. Its Tyler, he says, correcting him. Whether the boorish dude actually misheard his name or simply assumed that was his handle because it sounded more African-American is never clarified. A lot of things wont necessarily be explained or expanded upon, from why certain innocent comments can be construed as racist to whether taken-for-granted privilege might afford different strokes for different folks. (The fact that Silva named the film after this misnomer well, that speaks volumes.) But you can see how the accumulation of such small things begin to slowly wear on someone who already feels like hes the odd man out. It is the first note in a symphony of microaggressions. It will commence a spiritual death by a thousand tiny cuts.
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The movie doesnt completely stack the deck: The host for the weekend, Nico (Nicolas Arze), is Argentinian and one of the guests, Dylan (Faith No More keyboardist Roddy Bottum), is gay. But Tyler is the only black man present, and the combination of confusing in-jokes, passive-aggressive gameplaying, boundary testing, testosterone and conspicuous alcohol consumption start to unravel his stability and sense of self. Every time he tries to meet these guys halfway, the lines keep shifting. Theres no breathing room, no space to simply be just chaos and competitions he seems to keep losing. And this is before Michael Ceras rich douchebag shows up in a sparkly elephant mask and wetsuit, starts taking things without asking and insisting he should be able to buy Tylers doo-rag, because why not?
A Chilean director with a knack for skewing left when you think hes going right, Silva has made movies that are head trips (Crystal Fairy), tongue-in-cheek takes on class (The Maid) and light back-pats that turn into jabs at the jugular (Nasty Baby). His latest, however, is a gut punch. Every time you think this fly-in-the-buttermilk scenario is leaning toward being a satire or a straight character study, it keeps reminding you that what youre really watching is a horror movie. Viewers are both complicit in Tylers breakdown the look of self-contempt on his face after hes pressured to imitate an elderly black woman feels like a slap to ours and right there with him as he goes deeper into a nightmare fueled by tone-deaf idiocy and too much Irish coffee. We see the way that a late-coming guest (Marvelous Mrs. Maisels Michael Zegan) blithely treats a Cuban voodoo doll as some exotica souvenir, and how that cultural indifference translates as a dismissiveness of anything remotely other. We cringe as a good, liberal dude burns a religious painting despite Tylers discomfort over the idea. Things are destined to go too far. Even R.E.M. singalongs start to feel like more grist for the alienation mill.
Theres a palpable thrill in watching a director and his cast walk a gossamer-thin tightrope in the name of something so precise yet so loose, so free-flowing yet so ambitious in its aim. (That still-photograph last shot is a killer.) Its also one of the least dogmatic takes on the subject of race in ages, and so much of that is courtesy of the actor at the center. Tyrel appears to be an ensemble project, but this is Jason Mitchells showcase. Straight Outta Compton proved he could hold a screen by sheer charisma alone and Mudbound demonstrated that we might have a new leading man in our midst if only we could find him the parts. This disintegration-in-progress performance proves that hes flat-out one of the finest actors today, full stop. Its not just the shifts in body language as he navigates unfamiliar waters while trying not to rock the boat, or his gradual but noticeable descent into a drunken mess. Its the subtle manner in which Mitchells letting you peek at whats going through his head. The gentleman deserves attention and accolades. So does the film. See it and weep.
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