The Film Journal...Passionate and informed film criticism from an auteurist perspective.

Jay Russell: Hope in Hollywood; Plus, the Forgotten Femmes of Thomas Wilmer Dewing

By Sarah Crawford

Sarah Crawford is a freelance critic based in Philadelphia. She's previously been published in periodicals, including the online film journal 24 Frames Per Second.

Tuck Everlasting

A very accomplished painter lived in this country during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, procuring composition after fine composition of lounging ladies. His works hang around the country, a good amount in the Smithsonian's Freer Gallery. His name was Thomas Wilmer Dewing, Boston-born, and there is no hyperbole in comparing his piercing of domestic scenes to that of Vermeer.

Dewing's women are most often inside, sitting in sparsely decorated rooms, but when they are let out into the greenery of fields and forest, his subjects take on a very strange luminosity. The unfamiliar element of the out-of-doors only heightens the tension between the stern beauty of the figure -- through a slightly irritated and almost doubting model -- and the painter's intent in crystallizing her position. There is an allegorical clash as well, given that he is portraying women of the nouveau riche at a time when others of the same sex were first stirring and organizing for their independence. As it turns out, Dewing's thoughts on the philosophy of painting were basic, that is to say that his earnest passion was restricted, without apology, to the portrayal of beauty. This point of view attracted no malice from critic Royal Cortissoz, who said of him, "In a way absolutely his own he has developed that vision of the tangible world which we like to describe as 'seeing beautifully.'"

Dewing's paintings were slotted into the Tonalist period by historian Wanda Corn in 1973, long after his death in Modernist-drenched 1938 -- though at one time in his life he and his work were quite popular. While there has been a revival of interest in him, one cannot ignore a nagging culture-based urge to dislike pretty pictures, or at least seriously examine any draw towards them. Moreover, because of the lack of daring in his works, it seems strangely easier to view it as less a travesty and more a fact of life if indeed they have been given little import beyond their execution.

Like potters or portrait painters, some film directors appear to be operating in the role of artisan rather than artist, and in the case of Jay Russell this description is no condemnation. He is a Hollywood director in the old sense of the phrase, but his authorship of his films is evident, as well. The only problem: well-rendered sentimental movies don't garner much respect anymore, and Frank Capra would have some enemies if he were at it today.

Aided by a young Sundance Institute in 1987, End of the Line was Jay Russell's first feature film. He co-wrote this modest idiosyncratic tale of two latter-career train yard workers rebelling against both the company's switch to air freight and the fatality it could represent for their town and their way of life. Wilford Brimley -- steely as ever -- and the guileless Levon Helm ride a company engine all the way to the head corporate office to get their jobs back. Filmed in and around Russell's hometown and obviously his most personal work, End of the Line brims with heart and comedy, but the blue-collar community's quagmire is palpable in several scenes; one such captures a late night conversation on the porch between Brimley's character and his wife, wherein he reveals his fear that he will not be able to provide for her. Visually, this film is no feast. For the most part, Russell's Arkansas locations are brought to life only by their colorful characters (Mary Steenburgen, Kevin Bacon, and Holly Hunter also feature). This would change for the filmmaker as his budgets increased and his plots lost their pallor.

He then spent a number of years doing documentary work for television, among these were two contributions to the PBS Series Great Drives, one on Highway 61 and another on 93. An emphasis -- or at least a reverence -- for place in storytelling becomes noticeable at this point in his biography, as does what must be somewhat of an unassuming nature in being willing to work in TV.

As it was one of the best films released in 2000, My Dog Skip remains Russell's best. An utter surprise and an indelible morality tale, the movie was as subversively arresting as a children's movie comes. The story is based on author Willie Morris's childhood, and the resulting film is amazingly fluid. It's steadfast and gutsy; everyone's lives revolve around Skip, as does the movie; and all of this, such as the town's collective anxiety when the dog goes lost, is treated as an absolute -- something as natural as anything else under Yazoo, Mississippi's golden sun -- by the guiding hand of Jay Russell. It is interesting how this larger picture is actually a much more intimate one than End of the Line. It is Frankie Muniz's (Malcolm in the Middle) childhood which is helped along in My Dog Skip. Kevin Bacon, teaming again with Russell, also stars as the dad. He plays the stern parental role admirably and is part of one of the best scenes in the film: he and his son have a dialogue in the woods, scripted with reserve, that touches on his war injury. Harry Connick, Jr.'s narration is finely done and aides significantly in the audience's suspension of disbelief. Luke Wilson's distinctive, almost dreamlike style of acting is integral as well.

Russell's most recent work, Tuck Everlasting (2002), is a difficult case. This film fits into that rare category of tonic, so it is most useful to study it from a patient's point of view. The experience, then, can become a sponge bath of forest and fairytale. In fact, stars William Hurt and Sissy Spacek do just that for a lost society girl when they take her into their secret world in the woods. They and their sons have discovered a spring whose water brings immortality, and eventually Winnie Foster, the young runaway, must decide for herself whether she wants to join them. Tuck, much like My Dog Skip, centers simply around this source (literally) of both conflict and joy. This straightforwardness is a nice complement to the lush cinematography by James L. Carter.

Take this passage from the book: "For the wood was full of light, entirely different from the light she was used to. It was green and amber and alive, quivering in splotches on the padded ground, fanning into sturdy stripes between tree trunks. There were little flowers she did not recognize, white and palest blue; and endless, tangled vines; and here and there a fallen log, half rotted but soft with patches of sweet green-velvet moss." Overall, Russell is at his best in this one when he works in suggestive, cathartic (and expensive) riffs to render a reality that approaches the lines of description that Natalie Babbitt first penned. His resulting depiction of Winnie in the forest is not unlike a Thomas Dewing painting.

The cover of Modern Library's paperback edition of Swann's Way happens to be graced with In Luxembourg Garden by John Singer Sargent. Expertly chosen, it sits upon the text like a royal insignia. At the short age of 42, similar maneuvers are becoming clear in the style of our director. Jay Russell is proving himself to be an excellent "designer" of films, a "coordinator." He also, like Hitchcock, hides the flaws of his films well. And as we watch him draw superior performances from the two young actors in Tuck Everlasting, Alexis Bledel and Jonathan Jackson, other incarnations of the characters do not seem possible, and there is little room left for dissatisfaction.