Diractors is an ongoing series in which Hassle writer Jack Draper examines films, new and old, whose directors are better known for their work in front of the camera.
When reckoning with guilt, does interrogating your blame comes with the territory, or does it live separately in your gut? Is there as much of a focus on the victims as of whom is the cause? For today’s broad generalizations that we can make about the youth with violence, I could be talking about Adolescence, 2025’s TV breakout (thanks to the Netflix algorithm) that’s truly as great as you’ve heard. Yet, for today, these are questions for Michael Shannon’s directorial debut, Eric LaRue, which confronts these issues head-on. It’s a feat at first to see Shannon’s vision of how to communicate these questions without immediate answers and not make it seem redundant. With hot topic issues like this, it reminds me of what is lost in 2021’s Mass, for example: a soul.
Adapted from the play of the same name by Brett Neveu, we follow Janice and Ron (played excellently by Judy Greer and Alexander Skarsgård) as they deal separately with the fallout of their son being the perpetrator of a school shooting attack. As the unspeakable actions occurred without any assistance from them, the actions of Eric are only inevitable to be pointed to his parents. What did they know that Eric could’ve told them? Ron gives himself completely to God, in an attempt to seek answers as to why it was Eric who carried out the attack. Janice, meanwhile, is left to just sit in this anguish no mom should ever have to think about facing, as even an attempt to go back to her department store job brings out distress. As Janice has done enough stewing on the devastation, she chooses to meet with the other moms of the victims as recommended by a local preacher (played by Paul Sparks). As much as that meeting doesn’t “accomplish” anything by Janice’s account, what was being locked in those moms’ heads was now being vocalized. Similarly, the movie’s final words come with a conversation between Janice and Eric (Nation Sage Herickson) in prison, as ownership over what happened starts to be a bit more ambitious: first it’s Janice that is set on who is to blame, and it’s now her son.
The play, written before Columbine, speaks loudly of the issues facing gun violence today, but with the human anguish that theater can build on. Take, for example, the scene when Janice plays a game with the preacher to imagine a memory from a vacation, yet when he tries to make her recollect an uncomfortable moment in the memory, she completely shuts down from engaging. Or when she is completely done with the performance that Ron has been putting on, as someone holier than thou gets to explain away the motivations behind his son’s actions even when the compulsion was something Eric couldn’t even precisely identify. All this, and yet the movie still avoids the trap of a dreary, bitter viewing by its dry sense of humor being well utilized in moments of continuing life.
Shannon was captivated by the play’s core interrogation of what he refers to as “the fundamental confusion that is woven into the fabric of our American life”– what arose from not only the sorrow and difficulty associated with tragedy, but also our collective unwillingness to care for one another during such times. With this in mind, every ingredient is here for Shannon to make something that has been percolating with him on stage now for cinema. Shannon’s frequent collaborator Jeff Nichols is here producing, as well as Nichols’ past producer, Sarah Green. Shannon worked with Skarsgård on Little Drummer Girl and Judy Greer on Pottersville, and both these connections prove a trust with Shannon as a director that is even greater than as a costar. As a director, I’m thrilled to see where Michael Shannon goes on from here and if he embraces or moves away from the clear influence of Nichols. Shannon, in the same lane as someone a little older like John Malkovich, has had this aura of an actor with tremendous respect which goes in hand with a widely beloved reputation. With his debut now out and it being really good, I’m excited to see where he goes from here as this reputation from actor to director is a smooth one for him.
Eric LaRue
2023
dir. Michael Shannon
97 min.
Now playing @ Embassy Theater Waltham
