First photo from Matt Damon's new movie STILLWATER

looks good.

I viewed Stillwater on Wednesday evening and deemed it enjoyable and engrossing—a "very good" film. The movie effectively mixes a more American-style, action-in-space mystery with a more European-style, unfolding-of-time, phenomenological treatment of life and character. Indeed, I found this mix more effective than that of a recent, notable European movie, 2016's A Bigger Splash, which fascinatingly, and atmospherically, eschewed melodrama and narrative convention for the longest time before ultimately succumbing to fairly typical dramatic tropes.

The performances in Stillwater—most notably those of co-stars Matt Damon and Camille Cottin—are uniformly humanistic and authentic, sensitive and strong. The film is well-edited, well-paced, and vividly shot on location in Oklahoma and (for the most part) Marseille, France. A couple of the plot points are fairly predictable, but not overly so or quickly so—Stillwater manages to be highly involving over a two-hour, nineteen-minute running time. The focus on human beings and location shooting, along with the film's hard, unglamorous lighting and tastefully somber soundtrack, almost give it a seventies-movie feel. The picture transcends genre and becomes a testimony to the foibles and quiet struggles of human beings.

What is best about Stillwater is that it does not compromise: it poses difficult, morally ambiguous quandaries and provides answers that are not entirely satisfying. The material easily could have been sentimentalized, but writer-producer-director Tom McCarthy avoids such an approach. The writing shows excellent attention to detail, and the direction is firm, steady, and coolly observant in reflecting human warmth and sensitivity. And the coda, with Damon and Abigail Breslin, is terrific, speaking to the movie's insistence on avoiding cliché, on resisting false platitudes. Indeed, the coda is somewhat reminiscent of the coda between Clint Eastwood and Laura Dern in A Perfect World (Eastwood, 1993), one of the best films of the nineties.

YOU’RE UNFORGIVEN FOR MISSING CLINT EASTWOOD’S A PERFECT WORLD

And Damon's Oklahoma oil driller, with all his baggage, is somewhat similar to Kevin Costner's protagonist in A Perfect World.

Ultimately, Stillwater is not on that level—it is not as edgy, or poignant, or sweeping, or magisterial, or effortlessly naturalistic. In short, it is not virtually perfect. But few films are, and Stillwater is ambiguous and poignant and naturalistic in its own right. The film's choices, and those of its characters, are not easy. There are no cute packages, no bow ties, and in that sense, it is a movie that keeps you thinking. 

What I do not understand is why Focus Features decided to dump Stillwater into theaters in the middle of the summer. I suppose that the studio perceived the movie as counterprogramming to the usual summer fare, but it is the kind of film that would have benefitted from at least being discussed as an awards contender. Releasing it now, conversely, more or less ensures that it will not figure as a contender, or as a movie that adults will focus upon. 

And, to me, that is a shame. I look forward to seeing it again. 

Although I feel that Damon's protagonist is much more apolitical than this review suggests (and that Damon's own comments about his character suggest), this reviewer (Graeme Tuckett) is basically in sync with my analysis in this thread: