The Last Movie I Saw

For many years John Sayles was at the top of a very short list of film writer/directors whose work I'd go see automatically without any need for additional information or reviews about the specific movie. If his name was on it, I'd see it (that's still true, but the way, though his last effort, Honeydripper, never got to a theater in Montana so I'll have to hunt it up on DVD). The main reason for this was because it was clear that he was interested in building stories around characters who were real, true-to-life people, and that quality was evident not just in his protagonists, but in virtually every person who popped up on screen. Even when he dabbled in science fiction (with Brother From Another Planet), he maintained that connection with reality and, to my mind, made a movie that was way better than something like E.T. Win Win was not made by John Sayles, but given that this is the third movie in a row* directed and written by Thomas McCarthy that exhibits that same commitment to dealing with small-scale reality (by which I mean, the drama comes from the kind of events and conflicts encountered by almost anyone in the course of day-to-day life) rather than big issues or heightened melodramatic circumstances, he's now joined Sayles on that aforementioned list. In Win Win the plot turns on the decision to place an elderly man in a nursing home, and the repercussions that has on his family and others. The performances are great all through the cast (also a Sayles trademark, by the way), especially Amy Ryan and Paul Giamatti, who keep things believable at every turn. McCarthy doesn't pen the kind of sprawling scripts that Sayles is noted for, with multiple layers of story unfolding concurrently in a kind of roundelay of intersecting lives, but aside from that I see McCarthy as the inheritor of Sayles' commitment to maintaining a scale and tone that values contemplation and insight over spectacle and escape. Here's hoping he keeps up the good work.

*The others are the equally fine The Station Agent and The Visitor.