Felix Bush was a man made into a myth. Larger than life, and shrouded in macabre stories, the wild hermit lived in a self-made house in the middle of the woods with only a mule as company. "Gossip is the devil's radio," says one observer, and certainly gossip created a creature of the woods much larger than any man could be. This is his story, a character study of a man coming out of the woodworks, so to speak, to throw his own funeral party--while still alive.
Two questions cropped up immediately when watching this film: Why go into hiding? and then why come out of hiding forty years later to throw the biggest party anyone in the county has ever seen? This a film built on mystery and questions, as its hero (well...its antagonist) is a man of few words and unreadable eyes. It struck me that for every perfectly calculated word he said, Bush (Robert Duvall) was saying four, five, six things at once. Everything had double-meaning, and was said not only to express thoughts, but to also manipulate the thoughts of others. He had an uncanny way of getting others to do what he wanted, said the only man that might have constituted as a "friend."
The story is fairly straightforward. The hermit did come out of the mountain to a failing funeral home run by Frank Quinn (Bill Murray) to throw a funeral party. Not entirely a stretch for Murray, Quinn is a sly, smiling business man who will clap you on the back with one hand, and pick your pocket with the other. He and his assistant, Buddy (Lucas Black), take care of all of the odds and ends to the party while trying to unravel the past of this walking enigma. Also there is the relationship between Bush and Maddie (Sissy Spacek) that might have been sexual once, but whose implications reveal something dark and disturbing in the Felix Bush story.
It seems to me that this movie was grossly misrepresented in its advertising and in any tagline you will read about it. I expected a darkly funny film with more a Rooster Cogburn via Jeff Bridges character as the crazy old hermit. To be sure there were funny moments mostly coming from Murray, but there was a humor to be found in the deep wisdom of Bush's lines. This, however, was not the film I was expecting, and it took me a while to become adjusted to the fact that the film would be far more poignant and, ultimately, more sentimental than what I had bargained for.
This is not to say it was a bad movie, far from it. It was a very compelling character study of a man that perhaps not ought to have been studied. As far as an analysis piece of a strange individual goes there was definitely something to be gained here. Bush was described as a "cave" of a man, and that is a very intriguing road to search. Based on Duvall's performance I should like to give this film a positive review, but alas I cannot. The writer was very keen on centering on the lesson that gossip can destroy the lives of those that it might not actually want, and the devastating power that that can yield. The implications of what one event and the talk that it inspired are truly heartbreaking and shaming, but the way that lesson was presented was gone about all wrong.
I think that perhaps the film might have had more power if Duvall had not been the main character of the story, and that his true nature had been something of a mystery. The opening sequences were very curious indeed, and I wish that I had remained in a state of curiosity rather than suspense, which is where I was lead. The film is 100 minutes long, the first 80 building up to what should have a been a very powerful 20 minute payoff. I was disappointed. If we hadn't learned so much of the character that tall-tales were made from--no matter how good Duvall was--it might have made the ending, while anticlimactic to a point, much more moving and far more gratifying. Also, in the one scene at the end which should have presented all of the genius of Duvall (you'll know it when you see it) the editor made some incredibly serious blunders which made the third act deadly to the film.
Watch it for fine performances from seasoned actors, terrific music, and a couple of very funny scenes, but don't expect much in the way of satisfaction.
2.5/4
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