Serious.

We stayed up late last night watching Shotgun Stories on DVD. Then, I stayed up even later watching it a second time with the commentary track on (though I didn't quite make it through the second time before I turned it off and slipped into sleep). Listening to the commentary, Jeff Nichols sounds like a really nice guy. I'm genuinely glad for him that he's made such a good film.

I don't feel inspired to write much about it, except that tonight a random connection popped into my mind, between Shotgun Stories, a restrained Indie drama, and The Dark Knight, this past summer's blockbuster entertainment machine.

All of the talk (almost always on the periphery) in Shotgun Stories about how Son received the shotgun pellet scars on his back remind me of the Joker's repeated attempts at telling his back story, always a different story, but always "so serious." In both cases, there's an obfuscation of the truth. Certainly, the Joker is a far more active participant in the process of propagating misconceptions, but Son's omission to clarify matters serves the same purpose. It's just a silly connection, but it made me think about how Shotgun Stories is, I think, at its heart, about (failed) communication.


On another note... in the director's commentary, Nichols talks about the character of Shampoo serving as a sort of "Greek chorus," mediating between the two sets of brothers. Nichols continues to say that while reflecting on the character, he gradually realized that not only was Shampoo a vehicle for information transmission, but that Shampoo was, in fact, a devil.