If you are a frequent visitor to your local multiplex, you have might have noticed that there has been a serious dearth of movies about small-town American life these days. Last year’s Nebraska notwithstanding, Hollywood just doesn’t seem interested in telling stories about flyover country anymore. It could be a simple case of economics; with the profit margin on studio movies thinner than ever, producers have decided to simply go where the audiences are, and that means more films centered around urban life and fewer on the small towns that are slowly disappearing from the American landscape. Meanwhile, those films that do shine their lights on small town existence rarely get their proper audience because they are seen as “indies.” In his terrific article last month for Indiewire, Landon Palmer identified the strange paradox in which we find ourselves: “[W]ide-release metropolis-based films play nationwide, while smaller films set in the rural US almost exclusively play in the big city markets that carry platform releases.”
Jason Reitman’s Labor Day is an exception that will surely be used to justify the rule. Its story of romance between a depressed single mother and a surprisingly gentle escaped convict takes place in a small Massachusetts town in 1987 — not the distant past, but long enough to represent that bygone era when children could still wander around town on their own on a late summer afternoon. The child in question is Henry (Gattlin Griffith), the son and sole companion of Adele (Kate Winslet), a depressed and lonely single mother. Having lost her husband to his secretary years earlier, Adele mostly hides from the prying eyes of her neighbors in her run-down home, only leaving the house to run errands with Henry. It’s on one of these trips that the two cross paths with Frank (Josh Brolin), a handsome escaped convict who they take home for the night.
One night turns into several, and Frank quickly fills the void in their family – both as lover to Adele and father to Henry – that has dominated them since the divorce. The film’s gripping second half finds this new family trying to turn its long weekend together into a new life somewhere else. Like its characters, Labor Day reveals its tender heart to us openly and without much fear. Even if we know their idealised weekend will eventually succumb to reality, we love the dreamer for the dream.
Because of Jason Reitman’s past success, Labor Day opened on nearly 2,500 screens, but it barely made a dent in our national consciousness. It will probably be forgotten or, worse still, remembered as a joke. The critics already see it that way. “If it’s a hit, it could generate an uptick in prison correspondence from lonely women to roughnecks behind bars,” wrote Stephen Holden at The New York Times. Christopher Orr at The Atlantic thought the film “so saccharine that its very memory makes my teeth ache to the root.” James Berardinelli at Reelviews went the obvious route: “‘Labor’ isn’t just a word in the title of Jason Reitman’s new film, it’s a description of what it feels like to sit through the movie.”
The problem with trusting the critics on this one is that Labor Day wasn’t meant for them. Film critics mostly live in urban areas where they can catch all the latest indies, but Labor Day is for those who understand small-town living. Take, for example, the film’s infamous pie-making scene, which has been the source of much hooting and howling in the critics’ community. Here is the set-up: With Frank hiding in the corner, a neighbor (J.K. Simmons) brings Adele a basket of overripe peaches, which she has no idea what to do with. Frank does. He teaches Adele and Henry to make peach pie. It’s a long, sensuous sequence that some have compared to the pottery-making scene in Ghost, but the two actually have little in common. Those critics who see the pie-making as an erotic activity don’t understand how the act of growing and baking your own food is an act that binds country families together, and that the time and patience it takes to make a pie from scratch is something of value. I humbly submit to you, my fellow film critics, that it might even be something you are missing.
But there could be other reasons critics are ill-suited to rule on the film. Labor Day may not have been created for those who place a high value on cleverness and fire off pithy sarcastic comments in 140 characters or fewer. Rather, it is an earnest, guileless story of love and loss that marks a significant and welcome departure for writer/director Jason Reitman, whose reputation is as something of a chronicler of irony. There was his directorial debut, Thank You for Smoking, a wicked satire of tobacco lobbyists; the Oscar-nominated Juno, a comedy about a pregnant teen that came with its own distancing hipster lexicon; then two films – Up in the Air and Young Adult – about good-looking, successful people who never bothered to grow up. There is a running theme here: Reitman’s lead characters use the constructs of language to hide their vulnerabilities. From the spiritually-empty motivational speeches of Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) in Up in the Air to the cheesy high school romance novels from which Mavis Gary (Charlize Theron) has made her millions in Young Adult, his protagonists emerge from the shackles of their own words to satisfy the needs of the heart.
Labor Day starts where these films leave off, leaving the artifice of language almost completely behind in favor of raw emotion. Adele, Frank, and Henry spend much of the film in silence. Instead, their physical actions – like that pie-making – bond them together to create what is known as a family. I suppose I do understand why some critics have had trouble with the film: its earnestness is almost startling. Our minds – all of ours, but especially those of us who get paid to write about film – have been trained for irony and detachment, which Labor Day rejects in an elemental way.
Still, some will reject the premise that an urban bias poisoned critics against Labor Day by pointing out that movies about small towns actually had a bit of renaissance last year. Alexander Payne’s Nebraska is nominated for a whole bunch of Oscars, including Best Picture, and Jeff Nichols’s Mud was celebrated by critics. But both films comes with a thin layer of irony; Payne distances himself from the small town ethos through the character of David (Will Forte), who couldn’t be more pleased to have escaped, while Nichols fixes his gaze on a child and an almost-mythical outsider, neither of whom seem to be the product of their time and place. Labor Day, on the other hand, hinges on small-town life in its plot, characters, and themes, and approaches its subject with far more sincerity than either of those films.
I’ll admit that Labor Day isn’t perfect, and we shouldn’t overlook its flaws. The story is not particularly original, and the characters only rise above the level of archetype through some tremendous chemistry between Kate Winslet and Josh Brolin. But the movie means what it says, and sometimes that’s enough. It dares to diverge from the current culture of cinema by opting for a small scale, an open heart, and a sincere interest in the lives of small-town Americans. I only hope they get a chance to see it.
9 thoughts on “Have Urban Critics Gotten ‘Labor Day’ Wrong?”
An “earnest, guileless” love story? “Ham-fisted, obvious,” more like it. Are you really attempting to defend the pie-making scene? That’s not earnest at all; it’s steeped in cheesy, groan-inducing double entendre. “Our minds – all of ours, but especially those of us who get paid to write about film – have been trained for irony and detachment.” Really? Then explain Short Term 12‘s critical acclaim. There’s a small-scale, open-hearted film that is actually earnest and guileless in a wonderful way.
Here’s my perspective: I did think it was earnest and guileless (that’s why I said that).You might call it obvious, but the word I would use is “simple,” and I don’t mean that with any negative connotations. Like I said, there were no surprises, but it was heartfelt and honest, and the acting by Brolin and Winslet certainly elevated a script that was, I admit, a bit too predictable. But I was moved by its simplicity. Here is a story without agenda. It isn’t trying to trick me or impress me. And it opened me up in ways that I (apparently) am having trouble explaining.
Regarding Short Term 12, I would only say that, while I enjoyed it, I think some of the acclaim it has received is due to its social themes. It’s not an issue movie, not exactly, but it shines a light on a serious social problem. Of course, that’s a good thing, but it also makes it feel slightly larger to me and even a tiny bit manipulative. Those are just my two cents.
If by agenda you mean message I would agree with you. Labor Day is a film so misguided in intent that no message or moral got across to the audience. I find that you believe that rural populations appreciate this film more than urban ones offensive. It plays into the stereotype that non-urban people are simple minded and not willing to use their minds to comprehend less traditional types of entertainment. I have never believed in that kind of John Mellencamp BS that implies that small towns are the only places in the country with a sense of community which is a lie. Secondly, Whether the pie scene has more resonance with people who have experienced something similar does not change how bad it was. Furthermore, Irony and detachment are evident in a wide variety of films like Pre-hollywood films of David Gordon Green which are mainly set in rural communities or Quentin Tarantino’s films which are mostly set in LA and other urban centers. If growing up in Arkansas can make you just as ironic as growing up in LA then what you are saying fails to live up to scrutiny. P.S. Your whole article reeks of a very republican “Small Towns are the real america” subtext which as an Urban resident I find extremely disingenuous. If that was unintentional please take no offense.
That’s not what I mean at all. I live in a city now, and I love it. I’ve also lived in small town. This film was very much about small-town life in the ways that I referenced above. Lots of things in the film that resonated with me as being very true to country life seem to have been either ridiculed or overlooked by other critics. So my extrapolation is that the movie is just not for people who lives in cities.
I also thought the pie scene was terrific. It’s fine if you disagree, but I’m not sure you can objectively state that it’s “bad.” I find growing and making your own food to be a profound act, and I felt that the scene really captured that.
Sorry for being so vitriolic in my first comment. I’ll dial it back here.
I grew up in the suburbs, but I am from the midwest and have a lot of family living in small-town America, so I have some familiarity with that environment. But it is still unclear to me what exactly you’re referring to when you say the film “hinges on small-town life in its… themes.” What “finer points might be lost on those from urban or suburban areas”?
I agree Brolin and Winslet do the best with the material they’re given, but that screenplay is so problematic for me. And the problems don’t lie in the story’s agenda-less simplicity but in the maudlin romance adorned with innuendo-laden dialogue that, at times, feels like something out of a ZAZ comedy. There are also the issues of a deus ex machina policeman and an underwhelming flashback storyline.
After giving it some more thought, I think a better example than Short Term 12 is The Spectacular Now. That’s a small-scaled, open-hearted, earnest, critically-acclaimed, tragedy-tinged love story set in a flyover-country small town.
It seems we just have very different reactions to Labor Day, and that’s cool. If we all loved the same movies, the world would be a dull place.
Agreed on your final point. I respect your opinion, but we just don’t agree on the pie-making scene. I didn’t see much erotic about it. Sensuous, yes, but not erotic. I mean, the kid was helping them. Either you’ve got a filthy mind, or I’ve got a hopelessly naive one.
On your other point: There were several elements of the plot that seemed specific to small towns, but mostly it is about the way everyone knows everybody else’s business. It’s the way WInslet’s character was afraid of being judged by the townspeople after her divorce. The way her neighbor just enters her house without knocking. The way the supermarket checkout guy wondered why the boy was buying a male razor. This is, in my experience, the oppression of living in a small town where everyone knows everyone. It’s what WInslet’s character was hiding from.
These things don’t happen in cities quite as much because you’re constantly among stranger. You’re not afraid of being judged on the street. Your neighbors don’t just walk into your apartment unannounced (unless you’re Jerry Seinfeld). And the checkout guy sees far too many customers a day to know your business. You can disappear in a city, but you can’t in a small town, not really. So WInslet’s character disappeared into her house.
I’m not sure you can really understand all that unless you’re familiar with these elements of small town life.
“But the movie means what it says, and sometimes that’s enough.”
Curious what you thought of the Atlas Shrugged adaptations.
I didn’t see them. Your thoughts?
Note that I did say “sometimes” it’s enough. 🙂
I waited to see this movie until it came to DVD, and thankfully hadn’t read any critics’ reviews of it before watching it. I really loved the movie. Your points about small-town life are an apt lens through which to view its charms, but stronger, for me, is the lens of the broken-family story line, which I think all of the players perform brilliantly and which makes the romantic story-line easier to “buy” or settle into. It doesn’t seem likely that any of it would happen exactly that way, but I found it an enjoyable movie nonetheless. I wanted to thank you for sticking up for it because it takes guts as a critic to stick up for a movie like this. The movie was beautifully shot, and I really liked the way the story-line was pieced together. Also, the pie scene reminded me more of the love/food preparation connection used in “Like Water for Chocolate” than any of that trite stuff from “Ghost”, and to me was really touching. Maybe the main audience for this movie is people whose dads left, who always wanted a dad who would teach everyone to cook! In any event, I usually go with the overall critics’ opinions I find on Rotten Tomatoes, but this is a good example of why you should sometimes watch a movie before you read reviews. Thanks again for your point of view.