Happy Saturday! Hope you’re getting to recharge a bit today.
A worthy New York Times spread that grants faces and voices to those crucial to our lives but often go unseen and unheard: “Voices From the Front Lines of America’s Food Supply.”
If you can handle a self-deprecating chuckle, I think you might enjoy Harron Walker’s essay “One of My Friends Is in Her Flop Era (It’s Me)” on W. Finding the virtue in life’s nadir feels like it might be of value to some of us at the moment!
Lastly, passing this along in case it’s of any value to you or anyone you know — the Poor People’s Campaign is assembling a virtual “COVID-19 Memorial Wall” to mourn and remember those we’ve lost to the disease. It’s shaping up as a beautiful tribute to the people whose lives and legacies continue to reverberate even in their absence.
Now, what you came for…
DAY 303: You Can Count on Me (available on HBO Max)
Few artists move me with their work on a spiritual level quite like Kenneth Lonergan, writer/director of You Can Count on Me. I find it almost unbelievable that, as a person, he maintains an almost nihilistic view of human purpose and meaning in a cosmic scheme. Regardless, there’s a nobility he grants to the normal striver and struggler simply by having the care to present their lives as they are. His films are rich with sentiment but void of cheesy sentimentality, unfolding in the tenor by which we experience events that happen to us.
You Can Count on Me finds moving drama from the friction caused by the homecoming of troubled junkie Terry (Mark Ruffalo) to his childhood house, still occupied by his sister Sammy (Laura Linney) and her elementary-aged son Rudy (Rory Culkin). The two siblings took divergent paths following their parents’ untimely death in a car accident during their teen years. Sammy relies on the town for a source of comfort and familiarity; she finds a modest but meaningful existence serving as a lending officer at a small local bank (and, of course, as a single mother). Terry, on the other hand, comes to regard the recognition he receives within its borders as stiflingly oppressive. He’s become a wandering journeyman to try and find someplace that feels like home, equipped only with the knowledge that it’s not where he grew up in the Catskills.
The brother-sister reunion does not exactly come about simply from warm family affection. Like many who drift as they toil to find some stable footing in the world, Terry needs some money to get him out of a sticky situation. Sammy, overwhelmed to be in the presence of her prodigal sibling once more, is willing to begrudgingly offer him financial assistance. She doesn’t put strings on her offer, but it just so happens to work out that Terry decides to stay with her for a while to catch his breath and get his feet back on the ground. The arrangement serves a practical purpose for Sammy, too, as she gets an extra set of hands to help with childcare.
In previous viewings of You Can Count on Me, I was preoccupied with how Terry falls into the function of the surrogate patriarch. He becomes a treasured buddy to his nephew Rudy in the absence of his biological father, bonding over construction, fishing and a covert game of billiards. Part of that weight, which ultimately proves quite burdensome for Terry in his state, contributes to the slow-growing tension of the film.
But this year’s revisit highlighted something a little different: You Can Count on Me is a peerless movie about the force that siblings exert over each other when in close proximity. Though quite opposite in most ways, Sammy and Terry rub off on each other in unexpected ways. She brings out a responsible, caring side in him … and he draws out a wilder, more heedless side of her. The film’s gently unfolding narrative observes just how much each of them can pull one another in directions they find unfamiliar to how they perceive their essential nature.
Like Lonergan’s most recent film, Manchester by the Sea, I don’t think there’s a single thing I would change in You Can Count on Me. These movies don’t just create characters so much as they allow us to paratroop into already-unfolding lives and experience the war zone that is trying to get through each day with your dignity intact. The attention to detail and nuance with which he depicts ordinary internecine family conflict renders the struggles extraordinary. Lonergan might not believe Terry, Sammy or anyone in the world is part of some great purposeful plan. But his decision to bring them to life with compassion and care anyway does the next best thing — helping us become more aware of how we can be there for the people we love.
P.S. — If you really want to dig into You Can Count on Me, I cannot recommend enough that you read Lonergan’s interview with Bright Wall/Dark Room that was published last November to commemorate the film’s twentieth anniversary.
Be good to yourselves and to each other,
Marshall