Thoughts on Eye of God

  On Criterion, they are highlighting five films that actor Tim Blake Nelson has directed, and I watched his 1997 directorial debut Eye of God, a crime drama in the style of a Southern Gothic tragedy, and thought it was fantastic. I initially turned it on because it starred Martha Plimpton, an actress I've always liked, and I've seen interviews with Nelson where he sounds like he would be the cool acting professor at a college. It's not surprising that when an actor directs a film, they often get a lot of talented character actors in their cast, like with Sean Penn's directorial films, and this film had a cast of talent like a young Nick Stahl, Richard Jenkins, Hal Holbrook, Kevin Anderson, Margo Martindale, and Mary Kay Place.

    The film is told in a nonlinear narrative, which makes more sense over time, and the film doesn't have any intertitles or chapters like "Five months earlier" or "Two days later," so it's up to the audience to figure out the timeline of events. The film takes places in a small rural town in Oklahoma, a dying former oil town where jobs are scarce, and centers on two seemingly unrelated narratives: one in which a 14-year old boy, Tommy (Stahl), is found by the police covered in blood and traumatized by the tragedy that he has witnessed; and a young waitress, Ainsley (Plimpton), who meets the ex-con Jack (Anderson), that she had been in correspondence with during his incarceration, and quickly marries, despite barely knowing him. Their two storylines do intersect over the course of the film.

    Plimpton was fantastic in this film, as a lonely young woman whose father was abusive and died in a fire in a work accident, who latches onto this inmate, seeing a kind soul who has become a born-again Christian and found Jesus. As their relationship develops, his real nature comes out as being abusive and controlling, as well as antagonizing his own parole officer (Jenkins) over his and his wife's inability to conceive children. Anderson brought out this chilling menace in the character that worked perfectly, as someone who used religion to control his wife, like not wanting her to leave the house and cutting off her contact with other people, and to act superior to the townspeople and local police force.

    The film is really grim and sad, but so gripping and stunning to watch, I had to sit quietly for a few moment as it ended, not wanting to disrupt it with other media sounds, to let it sink in with me. I really liked this film a lot, and want to check out other films Nelson has directed, as I'm only familiar with him as a character actor who has played a lot of goofy Southern characters, despite his more serious demeanor in interviews.