I saw Meadowland at the Tribeca Film Festival earlier this year, and it’s now slated to open in the States on October 16th. Keep an eye out for it. Here’s my original review of Meadowland at Rogerebert.com.
Meadowland is the first feature for cinematographer Reed Morano. It’s a hell of a debut. Starring Luke Wilson and Olivia Wilde, it has a great supporting cast (John Leguizamo, Elizabeth Moss, Giovanni Ribisi). Meadowland looks at the aftermath in a couple’s lives when their 7-year-old son vanishes from a gas station restroom. (That event happens in the opening scene, so not a spoiler.) Grief and fear drives the couple apart in increasingly fractured ways. They have different responses to the event: the wife (Wilde) SURE that her son is still alive and out there, the husband (Wilson) more willing to consider other darker possibilities. Not because he’s callous, but because he’s a cop, and he is trying to wrap his head around what has happened in his life. The film is disturbing, emotional, gorgeously shot – but not TOO gorgeous: the subject matter is so dark it borders on the hallucinatory (as grief can do in people’s lives). While the word “bipolar” is never mentioned (despite the fact that Lithium is a factor in the wife’s life) – there’s one scene that is so unbelievably evocative of bipolar mania (not what it looks like, but what it FEELS like) that I almost had to get up and leave the theatre. A chill of dread: Never again. It was beautifully done and terrible.
The actors are all incredible. Wilde is a phenom, and Wilson is quiet, pained. (I love him.) This is my kind of movie. If you care about mid-level low-budget movies, made by people who want to take risks, and the survival of such difficult adult complex films, then this is the kind of movie to seek out and support.
I mention all the stuff I mentioned in this post also in the review, so forgive the repetition. Here’s the Meadowland review again.
