Starring Barlow Jacobs, Robert Longstreet, and Eddie Rouse
Directed by Zack Godshall
Written by Barlow Jacobs and Zach Godshall
Low and Behold is really two separate films meshed together. The narrative piece tells the story of the naïve, straight-laced young Turner Stull (Jacobs) who comes to stay with his Uncle “Stully” (Longstreet) in New Orleans, to take advantage of the lucrative claims adjusting business during the Hurricane Katrina aftermath. Uncle Stully turns out to have profit, and little else, on the brain … that and beer. Turner has had three days of training in the business and can’t seem to measure up to Stully’s expectations after he’s set forth to ply his trade in uncharted territory. So, Turner gets yelled at and lost a lot.
But, blessing in disguise, Turner is startled by the scruffy-looking local, Nixon—played with joyful rambunctiousness by Rouse—tapping on the window of his little compact car, urging Turner to give him a lift to the park so he can search for his lost dog. Put off by his bedraggled couture, Turner evades the persistent Nixon, thinking he’s dodged a bullet. But, as luck and inexperience would have it, Turner accidentally strands himself on a client’s rooftop, with no one around to hear his calls for help. He finds himself at the mercy of the only passerby who pays him any mind. You guessed it, Nixon! He uses the opportunity to strike a bargain, and Turner agrees to let him ride along on the daily rounds to look for his dog. Turner ultimately finds the knowledgeable denizen to be a helpful companion, and the two travel the back roads of New Orleans together. This, though largely heartwarming and occasionally quite charming, is the side dish.
The real meat and potatoes of this freshman feature by Jacobs and Godshall are the interstitial real-people interviews that imbue the film with the gravitas its storytelling seems to lack. Clearly, these filmmakers are intimately familiar with the beleaguered setting in which they’ve placed their saga. They lovingly weave a soulful tapestry out of the tattered tales told with humble, yet lively, humanity by those who still remain to describe what happened when the levees broke. These clips alone could compose a respectable, touching, and eye-opening tribute to this community’s intrepid survivors.
Though the narrative has its moments, it never quite rises to the level of poignancy that the moving clips portend. That being said, Jacobs, Longstreet, and Rouse do a rousing job of crafting their starkly contrasting, even Dickensian, archetypes. The camera does succeed in bringing us right into the shockingly, still much-ravaged landscape of the gulf territories. There is no way any American could watch this chronicle without at least a twinge of horror, grief, or shame. It’s this footage, though, and the stalwart grace of these victims, that also serves to infuse the most hope into the film.
For a first effort, Low and Behold is quite appealing. Much credit here is due its likeable cast, and a solid script. For me, however, Turner’s journey—though definitely influenced by the kinetic—secretly wounded Nixon and never really transcends its beginnings. More aptly, it stops and watches for a moment, and then continues on. If I’m meant to feel that Turner has been substantially altered, then the filmmakers have failed to make their thesis. This failure, however, tends to leave us with an even more disturbing, more relevant one, as it jumps from the emotional final moment to a closing scene. We follow Turner’s rickety little hatchback through the wilted landscape and the shattered homesteads that he measured and assessed to earn his daily bread, heading back to a life less dreary. After all the shock and awe expressed in America’s public lamentations when Katrina rocked and tore asunder one of our most vibrant cities and its culture, isn’t that was most of us did: stop, watch for a moment, and then continue on with our lives?
Grade: B-