Basket of Kisses

Tully (2000) 9/10
Tully Coates, Jr. (Anson Mount) and his brother Earl (Glenn Fitzgerald) work the family farm with their father (Bob Burrus). When an unexpected letter arrives, family secrets are revealed.

Tully is why people watch “small” movies. There is nothing spectacular going on in this movie. It is two young farmers and their father in a small town; one is shy, one is the town ladies man (Mount). Earl has a friend named Ella (Julianne Nicholson) who is giving him advice on asking a girl out on a date. They’ve probably known each other all their lives. Tully sleeps with several local girls, including a stripper, but he is awkward in asking Ella if she’d like to ride with him while he runs errands.

Their mother is dead, and the Coates boys remember her differently. Tully reminisces with April (the stripper) but she’s not interested. Ella, though, listens, as he tells her that his mother was glamorous–she took bubble baths and always smelled good. He was six or seven when she died, and his memories are seen from that young, idealized point of view, but he doesn’t realize that.

When the News That Changes Things arrives, it just arrives. It doesn’t come at a particularly special moment in anyone’s lives. It doesn’t just happen to arrive at a turning point, as is so often the case in such films. In fact, at first it hardly changes anything at all. Tully Sr. keeps the news secret, which irritates his elder son, but the boys continue leading their lives, raising steer, going to the movies, meeting girls, because the news is simply a sketch of plot that helps to structure things–it’s certainly not the point.

In separate scenes, late in the action, we see each Coates boy sneak around the farm in order to eavesdrop on a conversation. Each does it with practiced skill, and we understand that they’ve been doing that sort of thing all their lives–there are secrets and silences in their lives, and they handle it, sometimes by talking with each other, often by hiding behind the barn.

Anson Mount is the star of Hell on Wheels; he’s 38 years old according to the IMDb. In eleven years, he’s gone from someone who could convincingly play a twenty year-old to someone with a gray beard portraying a deep weariness and pain. For a moment, I didn’t recognize the face, but the voice is unmistakable. All the performances are nuanced, relaxed, lived-in. Everybody sort of feels like they were there before the movie started and will still be there after the credits roll.

Something happens towards the end that I love, and I don’t want to tell you anything about the end, but here’s the thing; there’s an early conversation which makes is incredibly obvious that the other shoe is going to drop. That sort of thing where you say “It never rains in this town” and you know there will be a torrent before the movie is over. It’s not a surprise, because it was broadcast to you; it’s more a completion. Except in Tully, there isn’t a torrent; there’s a sprinkle, kind of in the background, and nobody, nobody says “Hey, it’s raining,” or worse, “Hey it’s raining and it never rains in this town.” Here’s a movie with the wisdom to have a moment, and just let that moment be. Oh, wise movie, how I love you.

This movie kind of makes me ponder the movie industry, and its terrible odds and unfortunate vagaries. Anson Mount, now that he’s the star of a TV series, is the most famous person involved. I didn’t recognize anyone in the cast, and the director hasn’t made any other movies. I’d never heard of the movie, and it only has 1400 votes on the IMDb. So, what happened? The truth is, this sort of thing happens all the time, and there are piles and piles of lovely movies we’ll never see or even hear of.

Anyway, there’s a movie with a beginning and an end, and things happen. But mostly it’s a sweet look at a farm town and two young men and one old man who together must process loss and learn how to love in the present day.