Well, we’ve found the mopey drama of Sundance 2014. There’s one every year and I take it as a badge of honor, but I sure as hell ain’t recommending it.
In the aftermath of a mining accident, further tragedy befalls the Doyle family. Bill (Josh Lucas) also works at the mine, and Diana (Elizabeth Banks) copes by, well, not doing much. It’s clear Amos Jenkins (Boyd Holbrock) knows more about the accident than he’s letting on in the investigation, but he’s playing dumb.
Listen, I am a big fan of movies dealing with grief and tragedy in constructive ways. All the characters in Little Accidents do is mope. They’re not even mourning. Mourning is a constructive process where you get reflexive and start to look ahead to what life will be like from now on. I’m sure real people have trouble coping but if you’re just putting that on screen and nothing else, you’re exploiting stagnation.
The investigation into the mining accident sure isn’t interesting. I’ll bet real life protocols for workplace incidents are also bureaucratic and mundane, but I think even a documentary would find a way to make it compelling, let alone a narrative film. It doesn’t even feel like the characters are that burdened by it. Bill frets about becoming the scapegoat and losing his job, but that’s not much drama. It’s the beginning of drama but never goes further.
There are some blatant cry scenes. It’s a delicate temptation when dealing with tragedy on screen, because you want to honor natural reactions, but if it’s just lingering on an actor demonstrating the sadness, that’s exploitive of the audience. Look at us cry! Diana superficially tries to find things to do, like sitting in on a bible study and having grief sex, but there’s no complexity beyond the fact that she’s still sad. Boo hoo, your extra-marital affair didn’t make you feel better.
This is also one of those movies where a lot of characters sit around eating. Why do movies insist on giving us eating foley? It’s like they think bad table manners makes it realistic, because real people eat, slurp and chew and we’re not gonna whitewash that by censoring them when they have their mouths full.
The score is pretty blatant with long, sad notes telegraphing the scenes. It’s not quite in a minor key but it uses a lot of abrasive notes, long pulls of a violin or dissonant chords. More bad stuff happens be by the end too, but it’s not even enough to make it relentless. At least relentless tragedy could build to something.
I think the intent of the story may have been to explore characters who are inexperienced with emotions dealing with something so emotional. There are good ways to deal with that material though. Monster’s Ball was raw and visceral. Blue Valentine was more complex than the characters wanted to admit. The movie itself doesn’t need to be stunted to reflect stunted characters.
Little Accidents is the feature film debut of writer/director Sara Colangelo. Often first features feel so raw and personal that you can forgive some clunkiness. I can appreciate that Little Accidents may very well be where Colangelo is coming from, but I’m not on the same page this time.
Fred Topel is a staff writer at CraveOnline and the man behind Best Episode Ever and The Shelf Space Awards. Follow him on Twitter at @FredTopel.
