With time short, Ollie goes back in to business, putting her on a collision course with a rival drug dealer, Bill (Luke Kirby) and the law...
Little Woods was one of the highlights of last year's NZ International Film Festival. When it finally made its way to general release a couple months ago, checked it out again. After the formless dreck of Tessa Thompson's last vehicle, this was a real palette cleanser.
Re-watching Little Woods made me really appreciate the craft of writer-director Nia DaCosta.
This movie is so economical. The movie is filled with moments like this - none of the film's stylistic choices are that overt.
The opening sequence is a marvel; Thompson is shot in a long shot coming from the woods onto a road. As she moves into the middle ground, the camera pulls out the famous pull out-zoom in (from Vertigo, although DiCosta uses it to similar effect to Spielberg in Jaws) as a police vehicle speeds past her and pulls up behind her.
As Thompson runs into close-up, we hear the hard hammering of what sounds like the judge’s gavel, passing sentence on Ollie. Cue a hard cut to Ollie waking up to someone hammering on her door.
In a few minutes the film has brought the viewer up to speed on Ollie, and set up the laser focus of both its story-telling and the mindset of its central character. There is a strong sense of functionality to the story-telling, which keys in the viewer to the world that these characters live in. Ollie does not have time for contemplation or luxury. She has to move forward or die.
One of my (other) favourite sequences is in the diner when Ollie is interviewing for a job out of state. Bill arrives, having sniffed out that Ollie is back selling meds.
Initially we do not even see him - DaCosta plays his arrival on a tight OTS shot of Thompson's face, with the sound of a door and her eyes snapping to focus on a point over the interviewer's shoulder.
In an extended tracking shot along the diner booths, we follow Bill as he storms toward the table. Ollie excuses herself just before he arrives and heads down the line of tables, so they appear to walking in lock step with each other. DaCosta does not over-use editing - she lets scenes play out. This tracking shot works to show Ollie's adaptability, as she shifts gears from anxious interviewee to cool professional, matching Bill's stride as she heads off Bill's attempt to dominate the scene.
When there are cuts, they signal important shifts in power: in the following scene, Bill confronts Ollie in the bathroom. Ollie tries to defuse the drug dealer but Bill grabs her by the throat and slams her against the wall. DaCosta cuts here to a tight two-shot of the characters face-to-face. When Bill threatens Ollie, and demands a cut of her earnings, DaCosta cuts from the two shot to an ever-so-slightly low angle close up of Luke Kirby's face. When the filmmakers cut back to Ollie, it is back in the same two-shot as before. Ollie has lost this struggle.
In my last review I focused on the film’s association with noir; on this viewing the film felt even more like a western - albeit one in which the frontier is gone, and all the mythology of exceptionalism and progress has evaporated.
On this watch, I was struck by how much Thompson's Ollie reminded me of a classic western archetype - the no-nonsense man of action, with a personal code and a past of misdeeds. No matter the setback or obstacle, she has to move forward. Like the gunslingers of so many westerns, people expect her to do the dirty deed - in this case, run and sell drugs, that she has given up on. However, circumstances dictate that Ollie has to 'get back in the saddle'.
Even the way Deb describes Ollie is all about action - she is called ‘practical’ and a ‘doer’. But the movie highlights the difference with the archetype: while she is an incredibly active and forceful presence in the movie's narrative, Ollie is not physically imposing - there are two physical altercations in the movie (one which she initiates) and both of which she loses. In this universe violence is not a vehicle for character or narrative progression.
Like that archetype, Ollie is also defined as an outsider - she is a woman in a world of men (I remember an old John Oliver segment that explained the ratio was 2:1 in North Dakota), and a black woman in a world of white people. The only other person of colour is Ollie's parole officer Carter (Lance Reddick), someone whose ideological and professional role makes him an (unknowing) adversary. Ollie is alone.
Despite her loner status, Ollie is also defined in terms of her relationship with/juxtaposition to her sister Deb (James). Deb is initially presented as the opposite of Ollie - while Ollie looked after their dying mother, and lives in the family home, Deb is a single mother living in a trailer park. She is presented as a more passive presence, and in contrast to Ollie, never thinks ahead - a trait which leads to the film's biggest narrative turn.
While Ollie's race is never openly acknowledged, it provides the subtext to a terrifying sequence towards the film's end: while her sister is getting a forged Canadian health card, Ollie waits outside a bar. Framed in the foreground of a wide shot, Thompson looks small and vulnerable. In the far background, the door to the bar opens, and the familiar shape of a policeman's hat appears under the entrance light. A police officer steps out, stands for a beat and then turns to face Ollie. It reminded me of the way John Carpenter presents the Shape in Halloween.
The sequence is one of the film's highlights - DaCosta intercuts Ollie's interactions with this cop with Deb and the two forgers.
One choice I liked was that DaCosta only provides a rough sense of geography - while we know that the bar is close to the house where Deb is negotiating, we never get of sense of where the house is in terms of line of sight or distance. The sisters feel more separate than ever before.
The house where Deb confronts the forgers has almost no musical score, and DiCosta frames most of the scene from Deb's POV, with the forgers at the edge or in the back of frame. Like the cop they are threats, although their intentions remain more oblique (at first).
These two sequences emphasise the different tensions and threats the main characters face - while Deb has to deal with the threat of physical violence and sexual assault, Ollie has to deal with the representative of an institution with an established bias against people like her.
There are no helping hands in Little Woods - in a place of supposed prosperity, this is a world defined by limits and obstacles. Men are either clueless or obstacles themselves (Ollie's parole officer Carter (Lance Reddick), Deb's alcoholic ex Ian (James Badge Dale), Bill and the forgers).
Ollie and Deb ultimately have to depend on each other: when the forgers betray the deal, Deb steals a bunch of stolen Canadian health cards and bolts. Unintentionally, her quick thinking winds up saving Ollie, who is on the losing end of the policeman's interrogation.
Set amid North Dakota's oil boom, the contemporary equivalent of the gold rushes and other ventures of America's real and cinematic past, Little Woods is a place where the illusion of Manifest Destiny has evaporated. Capitalism has triumphed, hollowing out the ground and the people: There’s a scene about midway through set at a rodeo in which we see the performers re-bandaging old injuries and covering them with their shirts. In a brief cutaway, the movie undercuts a popular image of machismo, revealing it as nothing more than set-dressing.
Right, this review is really starting to ramble all over the place.
I loved Little Woods even more this time around. It is so well-crafted and acted, it deserves as many eyes on it as possible. Check it out, wherever you can find it.
Related
Little Woods (NZIFF 2018)
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