Lewis Smedes oft-quoted statement “To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you,” could have been written with ‘Get Low’ in mind. Except that the forgiveness the central character struggles to deliver in this profoundly moving film is towards no one else but himself.
Robert Duvall plays a cantankerous old hermit named Felix Bush, who forty years previously failed to save the love of his life from a burning house. Now living in the 1930‘s Bush literally makes himself a prisoner of his own inability to self-forgive; he judges that his failure means he has no right to enjoy a normal life with family and loved ones, and so spends decades shut away as a total recluse. He refuses the comforts of social companionship and holes himself up in his property just outside a rural Tennessee community.
Bush stoically weathers both the vicious rumours surrounding him and the deep-rooted suspicion that he is regarded with by the local townspeople. That is until he figures a worsening heart condition means his death is imminent and decides to clear his name. Bush announces he will stage his own funeral before he dies and invites folk to come and tell stories about him. His hope is to set the record straight and somehow find inner peace before his death. When a church minister (Gerald McRaney) refuses to assist him in his ‘live’ funeral, Bush approaches the local undertaker Frank Quinn (Bill Murray) who is swayed to help by the large wad of cash thrown at him. Quinn’s assistant Buddy (Lucas Black) is roped into assisting as well and he provides a strong moral compass for the story, as does another minister Rev Jackson (Bill Cobbs), who helped steer Bush through the lowest point of his life forty years ago.
‘Get Low’s’ strength lies in the fact it combines both subtlety and simplicity, and yet deals with complex characters and a weighty story. The different shades and hues of each character are superbly fleshed out by the powerful acting. Robert Duvall is brilliant as Bush, a man with endless depths and inner slippery crevices. Bill Murray is another class act - his particular gift is in making his somewhat sleazy characters both totally human and immensely likeable. Special mention should also be made of Bill Cobbs, who contrary to the way Hollywood normally portrays preachers, develops a character more akin to Desmond Tutu than Jimmy Swaggert.
While Bush is a fairly anti-religion kind of character, ‘Get Low’ itself is an intrinsically spiritual movie. Bush is not against religion as such, but rather he is anti-love and anything that represents love, because he does not feel worthy of ever experiencing it’s benefits again. Yet, in the process of planning his funeral, Bush is forced to reconnect some old relationships that slowly, but surely, begin to water his parched, old soul. Bush has spent his whole life avoiding people, but to come clean before he ‘get’s low’ (buried) he has to revive his ability to relate, and quite to his surprise he simultaneously awakens aspects of his character he thought long dead and buried. Rooted as it is in themes of guilt, regret and free will, ‘Get Low’ takes its viewers on a journey of redemption and reconciliation that anyone can relate to, and offers a new ‘lens’ through which to view the world that is cleaner and more compassionate.
‘Get Low’ is the kind of movie that should be made more often, but is made even more special by the fact that it isn’t. It is hard to believe that a movie with such bottomless depth is director Aaron Schneider’s first film and I look forward to more from him. Four and a half stars out of five.