According to IMDb, it was Terence Malick who brought this script to the attention of his chief disciple, David Gordon Green. It seems like what DGG originally had in mind was a lyrical, "Tree of Life"–type story focusing on Tim, the younger of two brothers who live with their widowed father in a farmhouse in rural Georgia. At some point he decided to switch over to a more bankable plot line, reminiscent of "Night of the Hunter," involving a hoard of gold coins that's hidden in the house and a covetous ex-con uncle.
Thus, we get a few slices of Tim's story—he's a dreamy ten-year-old who suffers from pica (an eating disorder that makes him crave paint and dirt and such) and arranges his old paperbacks "by the way they smell"—intercut with faster-moving scenes of conflict and pursuit. Perversely, after all hell breaks loose (no spoilers here!) and the brothers run off with the gold, Green starts channeling in Malick at his most leisurely and reflective, and we get a lingering shot of a slow-moving woodland stream under Tim's improv'd monologue about chiggers and their habits
The "Night of the Hunter" storyline stalls repeatedly so Green can splice in little comic vignettes of rural life—the uncle's encounters with a talky towtruck driver and a goofy cashier who swallows her gum, the wedding of a local boy and an Asian picture bride—that he'd clearly have loved to expand on. The final scenes play out in familiar DGG locales—a giant auto graveyard and a homeless encampment—but the film had totally lost momentum by then, and I couldn't get too interested in decoding their occult significance. (Earlier references to Charon and Christ's stigmata remind us that the original treatment was written by a prep-school English teacher.)
No doubt that DGG's a brilliant filmmaker, but this seems to be one of those overstuffed auteurist efforts like "The Master" that have to be watched repeatedly on disk (including deleted scenes) before you can get much out of them. (Too bad that he didn't get a shot at "A Confederacy of Dunces," btw.)
Thus, we get a few slices of Tim's story—he's a dreamy ten-year-old who suffers from pica (an eating disorder that makes him crave paint and dirt and such) and arranges his old paperbacks "by the way they smell"—intercut with faster-moving scenes of conflict and pursuit. Perversely, after all hell breaks loose (no spoilers here!) and the brothers run off with the gold, Green starts channeling in Malick at his most leisurely and reflective, and we get a lingering shot of a slow-moving woodland stream under Tim's improv'd monologue about chiggers and their habits
The "Night of the Hunter" storyline stalls repeatedly so Green can splice in little comic vignettes of rural life—the uncle's encounters with a talky towtruck driver and a goofy cashier who swallows her gum, the wedding of a local boy and an Asian picture bride—that he'd clearly have loved to expand on. The final scenes play out in familiar DGG locales—a giant auto graveyard and a homeless encampment—but the film had totally lost momentum by then, and I couldn't get too interested in decoding their occult significance. (Earlier references to Charon and Christ's stigmata remind us that the original treatment was written by a prep-school English teacher.)
No doubt that DGG's a brilliant filmmaker, but this seems to be one of those overstuffed auteurist efforts like "The Master" that have to be watched repeatedly on disk (including deleted scenes) before you can get much out of them. (Too bad that he didn't get a shot at "A Confederacy of Dunces," btw.)