Darkness of the Land and the Soul
Reviews and Comments by Ken Burke
I invite you to join me on a regular basis to see how my responses to current cinematic offerings compare to the critical establishment, which I’ll refer to as either the CCAL (Collective Critics at Large) if they’re supportive or the OCCU (Often Cranky Critics Universe) when they go negative. However, due to COVID concerns I’m mostly addressing streaming options with limited visits to theaters, where I don’t think I’ve missed much anyway, but better options are on the horizon. (Note: Anything in bold blue below [some may look near purple] is a link to something more in the review.)
My reviews’ premise: “You can’t please everyone, so you got to please yourself.”
(from "Garden Party" by Rick Nelson and the Stone Canyon Band, 1972 album of the song’s name)
Here’s the trailer:
(Use the full screen button in the image’s lower right to enlarge its size;
activate the same button or use “esc” keyboard key to return to normal.)
If you can abide plot spoilers read on, but this blog’s intended for those who’ve seen the film or want to save some $ (as well as recognizing those readers like me who just aren’t that tech-savvy). To help any of you who want to learn more details yet avoid these all-important plot-reveals I’ll identify any give-away sentences/sentence-clusters with colors plus arrows:
⇒The first and last words will be noted with arrows and red.⇐ OK, now continue on if you prefer.
WHAT HAPPENS: Lynette (Vanessa Kirby) lives in a rental house in Portland, OR (film shot there too) where she grew up until age 16 (came back later after considerable personal trauma), now shares it with her hardly-supportive mother, Doreen (Jennifer Jason Leigh), and her slightly-older, Downs syndrome-afflicted brother, Kenny (Zack Gottsagan)—Dad seems to have moved on years ago. She struggles mightily to support all of them, working by day at a large bakery factory, by night as a bartender, and on some nights as an “escort” for local men. Somehow, though, she’s saved $25,000 for payment on buying the house with a need this day to come to the bank, along with Doreen, to sign the necessary paperwork. However, Doreen’s a no-show with Lynette given until 9am the next day to come with Doreen and the cash or else they’ll be evicted with another potential buyer waiting in the wings. Then, to nearly push Lynette off of an emotional cliff, when she gets home Doreen shows up in a new car having spent the $25,000 to buy it (she claims the money’s hers to do with as she pleases; how that’s true eluded me—she also admits she’s a “shitty mom”). Desperate to replace the cash, Lynette blows off her evening bar shift, meets up with a client, wealthy Scott (Randall Park), hoping he’ll loan her the money, but all he cares about with her is sexual pleasure, not her personal traumas, so they do screw one last time with him “generously” giving her $1,000 rather than the usual $500. When he’s out of the room as she’s leaving she grabs the keys for his Mercedes, drives off in it (presumably to somehow sell it), then gets constant phone calls from him to bring back the car, his anger rising as time passes, so she, panicked, leaves it under a bridge, moves on to her next hope after walking back to her own car. She visits “escort” friend, Gloria (Julia Fox), a senator’s mistress living in his swanky digs, demanding the $3,000 Gloria owes her. Gloria opens up a safe but gives Lynette only $500, says don't disturb anything, leaves.
Lynette tries to figure out the safe’s code, fails, contacts bar co-worker (and ex-con) Cody (Stephan James), asking for his help in opening the safe, offers $400 so he comes over but raises the price to $800 (dubious this is her safe she’s simply forgotten the combination to), insists it has to be hauled away to be broken into. Next stop is with Cody’s guy who uses a sledgehammer, finding inside lots of cash, some Rolex watches, and cocaine. The guy wants to keep it all with Lynette using one of his tools to injure him as she and Cody escape with the money and the coke which it turns out will still leave her $6,000 short even as Cody tries to get away with the goods after giving her $2,000 for the Mercedes. She rams him with her car as he tries to escape, leaving him hurt but alive as, in ultimate desperation, she goes to Tommy (Michael Kelly), the guy she ran away with at 16, though he turned out to pimp for her, forcing some time in prostitution until she left him. ⇒He doesn’t have the needed cash but sends her to Blake (Eli Roth) to buy the cocaine (by this time she’s also picked up Kenny from her friend, Mona’s [Rachel Pate] home where he stayed for awhile; Doreen was furious it took Lynette so long to do this). Blake gives her the needed money but expects sex so she hits him, manages to get out with Kenny but not until she’s been thrown through a glass coffee table. Returning home, Lynette gets help from Doreen in picking glass fragments out of her back but is shocked to learn Doreen never had any intention of helping buy the house as it has nothing but bad memories for her; instead, she and Kenny are going to move in with Mona, as mother and daughter continue in conflicted accusations. Then Lynette gets a call from the bank that the house has now gone to a higher bidder, so all of her misery last night was for naught. Lynette sadly tells Kenny she has to go for now but will return someday, then she leaves some money for Doreen, drives away.⇐
SO WHAT? When I first read a brief summary of Night Always Comes I was immediately struck by some of its plot resemblances to Straw (Tyler Perry) which I reviewed a couple of months ago where Taraji P. Henson’s Janiyah Wilkinson also is a burdened, overworked woman who must raise a certain amount of cash in a very limited time or else will become homeless (she also faces greater crises than even Lynette has to endure over the course of one day including homicide and alleged bank robbery along with an intense personal tragedy; however, at least her Mom won’t be a contender for Worst Mother of the Year like Doreen should be). While I was powerfully impacted by all that Janiyah attempted to endure, I did feel her crises were piled on a little too thickly (although Perry says that’s intentional, to accumulate in a single story the horrible miseries so many marginal people in our society must endure rather than making a series of films about situational tragedies) while Lynette’s are a bit more organic as she makes her way to the only sources of her needed $25,000 she’s aware of (bank robbery’s not an option as those places aren’t open at night, plus likely being arrested for a felony wouldn’t help much in buying her house). Both of these narratives are heartbreaking for what they depict about women at the end of desperate ropes, yet for me Caron’s tale is a bit more feasible, not quite as overburdened (nor with a key plot detail hidden from us until near the end) as what Perry presents; the OCCU finds both films to be similar as well, although with clear reservations about each of them (more details noted in this review’s next section just below).
This film’s based on a novel by Willy Vlautin, The Night Always Comes (2021) which, from a summary I've seen (you don’t expect me to read the book, do you?), is very much like what we get in the cinematic adaptation, short of some melancholy memories by Lynette of her ex, Jack, so it would probably be as downbeat a read as is a viewing of the film, yet if in print we also get a strong sense of the misery this woman’s had to endure which has yet to break her determination to rise above it, then the book’s potentially a rewarding investment as well (the film also has a tiny bit of an upbeat look at Lynette at the beginning, with home movie footage of her as a happy, playful child, but her adult life’s immediately put into negativity as another opening montage notes the growing economic disparity in U.S. society and the social hatred toward the poor [was this film made last week?]). There’s certainly no financial, emotional, nor moral redemption in Night Always Comes, but (in my opinion) the stories we tell ourselves don’t always have to lead up to some road (or maybe the indication at least) of one toward salvation; sometimes we just need to be artfully reminded how miserable life can be—even if we’ve done nothing (or have stopped doing something) to earn that misery—so we can force ourselves to take stock of our situation, see if we can leave behind people and/or circumstances holding us back rather than pushing us forward, and reaffirm trust in ourselves as we search for the dawn needed to dispel the night surrounding us. For me, this film accomplishes such needed introspection, even as we wade through the rising flood waters around Lynette. If you do a YouTube search for this film you’ll find several videos claiming to explain the ending, such as this one (8:58 [ad interrupts at 1:45]), but you’ll find more summaries than explanations, although perhaps the most relevant one is from Netflix, including some commentary from Caron and Kirby.
BOTTOM LINE FINAL COMMENTS: As noted above, the OCCU has not been too supportive of these tales of “women on the verge of a nervous breakdown” (to borrow a title from one of Pedro Almodóvar’s early triumphs [1988]) with Straw getting 54% positive reviews at Rotten Tomatoes, a Metacritic average score almost the same at 56%, while Night Always Comes also gets an RT 54%, but at MC the score "soars" all the way to 60%, bringing it there into the low range of CCAL territory. It's disappointing to me that so many of my critical brethren are so down on Night … when I found it to be quite intriguingly-watchable, so I’ll let Benjamin Lee of U.K.’s The Guardian speak up for those not so impressed by this film: “Night Always Comes, while set in and around Portland, Oregon, is made by a British film-maker and led by a British actor, both from a country of artists more comfortable raging against the machine. [… Yet it] tries to be both seat-edge action thriller and searing social issue drama and while Caron is able to squeeze suspense out of the early, frenetic moments, there’s not enough emotional weight to the more human final act. It might be glumly of the moment and it’s never a bad thing for a tech giant like Netflix to fund films about those grappling with the hopelessness of an impossible system but noble intentions aren’t enough to save this one.” Interestingly enough, given some recent disagreements with my local guru, Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle, I’ll let him take charge of supporting this film, as it was his positive review that led me to watch Night …: “ ‘Night Always Comes’ isn’t an especially ambitious movie, but it’s simple where it needs to be simple, and it’s complex when complexity is called for. […] The movie takes place during an acute economic crisis, though the specific terms of the problem are familiar enough in our current state of affairs. Wages are staying the same, while housing has become increasingly expensive. […] The movie devises lots of fraught, intense moments, but what’s even more impressive about the screenplay is the way it seems to understand the psychology of the people that Lynette must deal with once she descends into the lower depths. Everyone she meets has an uncanny capacity to justify their most selfish behavior with deflections and evasions.” So true!
In this case I encourage you to listen to LaSalle as you treat yourself to a compelling journey into increasing desperation with an excellent performance by Kirby (it’s nice to see Leigh again as well, although her heartless role gets a minimum of screen time). Of course you’ll have to turn to streaming to see it as it’s available only to Netflix subscribers ($7.99 monthly with ads, $17.99 without; even in just 1 month you’ll also have access to their vast library), as I do encourage you to watch it, even if you have to join Netflix, however briefly. While you decide about that, you might give a listen to my usual review-closing device, a Musical Metaphor, which this time is Them’s (fronted by Van Morrison) 1965 hit, “Here Comes the Night” (a much later inclusion on the 1990 Best of Van Morrison album) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpKpAierYus&list=RDQpKp AierYus&start_radio=1 about a guy who’s lost his love to another man with his heartache intensified by the encroaching darkness: Here comes the night / Lonely, lonely, lonely night.” Lynette’s night is certainly more troubled than that, but I think the song captures the mood of her story quite well, even as the film’s title reminds us that whatever plans we make to move beyond our personal tragedies, it’s likely the “night always comes” to challenge us again, with problems awaiting her when she wants to visit Kenny given her unresolved situations with Gloria, Cody, and Blake so any return to Portland could easily offer new night troubles for this struggling woman (who could face some felony charges if others she encountered on this particular night might care to even the score).
SHORT TAKES
Related Links Which You Might Find Interesting:
Some options for your consideration: (1) IMDb's Five Things to Watch on the week of 8/24/2025; (2) New and upcoming book-to-screen adaptations; (3) New and upcoming superhero movies and streamers (many of these listings have decent-length plot summaries); (4) Martin Scorsese's Top 10 films (18:32; we marginally agree in that his #1 is 2002: A Space Odyssey [Stanley Kubrick, 1968] which is #8 on my Top 10 list; I also have some different choices than he does for the films of Jean Renoir [Rules of the Game, 1939; my #3] and Michelangelo Antonioni [Blow Up, 1966; my #6]).
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