Mud: a darkly American fairy tale

“Mud” is a boy’s story, or more appropriately a boy’s fairy tale. There are fantastical and optimistic elements at play. There’s young love, a playful sense of childhood discovery and adventure, and the very adult journey of growing up and seeing the world for what it truly can be.

Ellis and Neckbone are two adolescent boys growing up on the rural and impoverished Mississippi River in Arkansas. Traveling to a small island in search of a boat caught in a tree, the boys find Mud, a man waiting for his true love to return to him so they can run off together and away from their troubled past. The film then weaves in between Ellis’ passage into adulthood and Mud’s expedition to win his love back and start anew.

As the titular character, Matthew McConaughey continues his streak of knockout art house film performances. Like his work in “Magic Mike” and “Killer Joe,” McConaughey exudes a burning concentration his earlier performances severely lacked. The days of the dirty sexy romantic comedy hunk are behind him as he settles into a newfound persona of the darkly meditated enigma with an air of eccentricity.

But the film’s true heart lies in young Tye Sheridan as Ellis, an actor who delivers a depth that peers thrice his age fail to achieve. Jeff Nichols directs him with a gentle hand, allowing the young man his untainted wonder at the surrounding world. As the film goes on, Ellis’ sense of adventure begins to dissipate as his parents contemplate divorce and he learns the pain of a broken heart. The film wouldn’t have worked had we not become invested in Sheridan’s character, and he pulls it off in spades.

But “Mud” thrives because it chooses to be unwaveringly hopeful despite its gloomy themes. Men mistreat women. Women mistreat men. A father cannot parent his son. It’s a world full of misunderstanding, but Nichols crafts a tale in which we’re reminded that perhaps the marvel in a child’s viewpoint is all we need to find the good in the world. He suggests that perhaps, in one way or another, we’re all living the same story. And it’s never too late to go in search of what we’re truly seeking in our lives. In the end, it’s a modern American fairy tale that Mark Twain could have written had he lived in a post-recession, 21st-century America.