Meadowland (2015)

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

A Masterpiece!

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

It's a year since Sarah (Olivia Wilde) and Philip (Luke Wilson) lost their son Jessie who disappeared after going to a gas station bathroom. She's a teacher in NYC and he's a policeman. She becomes obsessed with the outcast special-needs student Adam and his foster parents (Elisabeth Moss, Kevin Corrigan). Philip's screw-up brother Tim (Giovanni Ribisi) is staying with them. Philip is going to a support group. Sarah insists that Jessie is alive and is spiraling downwards.Olivia Wilde delivers a quietly devastating performance. Her obsession with Adam is compelling. Philip deserves to have someone to concentrate his lost on just like Sarah. He seems to have a scattering of characters to interact with. He's a cop which should be easy for him to fixate on one victim. His side of the story isn't as compelling. This is Wilde's movie and she delivers.

This film is a good reminder for me to not follow film ratings alone as an indicator of quality when deciding whether or not to watch something.I'd put this in my Netflix queue and when it came and I sat down to watch I was dismayed by early occurrences. Surely I hadn't decided to order this . . . this genre . . .I visited the critiques here, was discouraged by the 5.2 rating but trusted the intelligence I encountered here in the reviews and went back and saw that, yes, this IS a good film.The editing . . . the single shot of Phil where we see for the first time, on the left side of the screen his attire and suddenly know his profession, and at the same time on the right side of the screen, reflected in the car's windshield, what is on the dashboard. In a second, an instant, we know so much more about Phil.The music is just right and enhances each mood.It's a well crafted film.It is very sad.And it is very good.

"Meadowland" is a film by first-time director Reed Morano, a cinematographer by trade, responsible in part for such notable indies as "Frozen River." Morano has fashioned a deeply atmospheric tale from a screenplay by first time feature writer, Chris Rossi, chronicling the downward spiral of a husband and wife whose child is kidnapped by a pedophile (similar to the true-life Etan Patz case). The story begins in a harrowing scene where the couple stops at a gas station in upstate New York with their young son in the back seat. The kid goes to the bathroom and doesn't come out—when the father opens the door, he discovers his son has vanished. We then flash forward a year later and the child is still missing and the parents, Sarah and Phil (played most intensely and convincingly by Oliva Wilde and Luke Wilson), are coping from the fallout of the overwhelming tragedy in their lives.The great strength of the film (and perhaps also its greatest weakness), is that the focus is on the internal arcs of the principals (as opposed to the conflict between the two). When we first meet Sarah, an elementary school teacher, she's on lithium and has convinced herself that her son is still alive. Phil, a NYC police officer, castigates his wife for denying reality (as it's becoming more apparent, due to a police investigation of a pedophile under surveillance upstate who may be implicated in the abduction, that the little boy is never coming home).In one of the strongest scenes in the film, Sarah goes looking for an animal cracker that her son was eating on the day he disappeared, and finds it wedged in a crack in the back seat of their car. Attempting to reconnect with her son in any way, she ravenously wolfs the cracker down, satiating herself for a moment despite the grief that never goes away.The plot eventually focuses on Sarah's obsession with Adam, a young student at her school, who has Asperger's Syndrome. The child is treated poorly by her foster parents—Sarah follows the mother in one scene and helps her out with money after she's unable to pay for groceries at a convenience store. I'm not exactly sure where that plot strand was leading—later on, after throwing out her medications, Sarah has a manic episode where she ends up having sex with the boy's father (again I suppose, indicative of her downward spiral). Meanwhile Phil appears at first to getting himself together by attending a support group for parents of murdered children. But like Sarah, he is not immune to the deleterious effects of the tragedy that has impinged upon his life. In a subtle scene, he kicks over a roadside memorial to a deceased father—his way of "coping" is lashing out (as opposed to Sarah's self-destructiveness). Later Phil inappropriately provides one of his fellow support group members with the address of the drunken driver who killed his daughter. It's obvious that Phil has lost his moral compass despite the fact that he's supposed to uphold the law as a law enforcement officer (a public servant).Morano's camera work as well as her direction prove that she's an extremely talented filmmaker to be reckoned with in the future. Meadowland's problem is Rossi's uneven script which lacks a great deal of conflict and rising tension. Instead, the focus is on just how low these characters can sink as they cope with the immediate reality of their missing child. Little is added by a subplot involving a visit by Phil's unstable brother Tim, who Sarah and Phil put up in their apartment, while he is attempting to get his life together. I won't reveal the ending entirely but suffice it to say there is a measure of redemption for Sarah involving an elephant, a class of mammal that Adam, the young Asperger's child, has shown great affection for earlier on (Sarah's self-obsession at the denouement with her concomitant lack of attention to Adam, remains a disturbing scene). Phil perhaps gains his measure of redemption when the police investigation into their child's disappearance, is resolved. Meadowland is primarily recommended for the intense, tragic atmosphere it invokes. The lack of a true, discernible plot and focus exclusively on the principals' internal arcs, are its Achilles heels.

I think it would be, at least...The movie is pretty much flawless, thanks to a wonderful work of Reed Morano in her directional debut and to the writer, also a debut, Chris Rossi, that delivered that beautiful and sad story.A good director can save a shitty cast... A wonderful cast can't work with a lousy director. Don't know why i wrote that, 'cause there's nothing to do with the movie! Maybe, I was preparing my queue to say that the cast was also brilliant.Olivia Wilde, Luke Wilson, Giovanni Ribsi, John Leguizamo, Elizabeth Moss, Juno Temple... The boy... Ty Simpkins... This boy is everywhere! From blockbusters to smaller movies... Literally, he's in the biggest Box Office of the year and in the one of year's most praised movies by the critics. Still, I think he needs do more, play more parts, before he can be called a great actor.As I was saying, with that amazing cast, the movie could have at least more ten minutes. Leguizamo and Ribsi... Man I love them... They are that guys who do an awesome work in comedy... You recognize them, you recognize the signature, is good, you love it... Then, they do a drama, and you are like "How is that possible? How can they be that funny and be also so great in that drama?". It goes to Luke Wilson also. I don't think he is funny at all, but he is more then the guy in Legally Blond... And the rest of the cast... One scene with Elizabeth Moss, a great scene... One with Juno Temple, also a very good scene... BUT, after all, was a movie about Olivia's and Luke's character. The focus were in that couple that passed through grief in its on terms. Man that movie hurts sometimes.Allow me to make a comparison. We have Reed's Meadowland (2015), on the red corner, and John Cameron Mitchell's "Rabbit Hole" (2010), in the blue corner. Both movies are about a couple trying to deal with the loss of a son. Meadowland has 105 minutes, including credits, while Rabbit Hole has 91, also with credits. Still, I feel like Rabbit Hole is the longest movie that I've ever watched in my life. AND I WATCHED THE EXTENDED LORD OF THE RINGS TRILOGY IN ONE WEEKEND! Rabbit is a sad movie and most of the time you just have to look away 'cause you are sick of it! Meadowland is a completely different story. I mean, the story is very alike, still is a different story, but what I meant was that "This is not the case with 'Meadowland'".Meadowland is a sadistic voyeurism. You watch that couple "deal" with their loss, you watch'em "try" to move on, you watch'em hurt 'emselves and each other, you watch they grow apart, you watch Phil receiving alone the news about his son's death, while Sarah is f*cking the foster-father of the boy who she's obsessed with. AND TRY TO GO WITH THE KID TO AFRIKA! MAN THAT IT HEAVY STUFF... And still you're not able to blink, or even breathe sometimes through the movie, 'cause you don't want to loose anything. And it is over. You want more, but the story came to its end. You had the start, the development and the end. It came in a straight line, a clear path, but all you can think is "... man, I wouldn't mind to know a little bit more of the rest of the characters, as Tim or Alma, or Even Joe and Shannon..." But this movie is about Sarah and Phil, and in that case, mission accomplished.As an epitome, "Meadowland" has the greatest performances of from the two protagonists, and a perfect debut from the director and writer.