I totally get why Company, Casey Affleck‘s first directorial effort since his sophomore 2019 film behind the lens, Light Of My Life, is titled the way it is. This movie spanning a trio of generations in the 20th century is essentially divided into three parts, but each one specifically is about human connection and how we deal with each other, so “company” is a nice shorthand way to describe it, the company of strangers when they meet. However I would say just as good, if not better, title might be Stories because that is what lies beneath this beautifully shot, deliberately paced meditative gothic mystery. It is all about the stories we tell each other, tales that can offer more meaning to our lives, whether about our private grief, our needs for revenge vs compassion, our ability to communicate and understand each other, even in the face of times when raging against the world might not be our better instinct.
Affleck, as a filmmaker, both with the aforementioned Light Of My Life, and now Company, stylistically seems most influenced by films in which he starred like his Oscar winning role in Manchester By The Sea, The Assasination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford, and David Lowery’s A Ghost Story to cite three films which ask us to go with flow, slow down, and take it all in. That is how I felt watching Company, a movie that asks us to simply watch and listen, to let it roll over us, and perhaps to discover the meaning of the words we say to each other, to let the stories unfold, because by the time they end we may be better for the experience.
With a screenplay Affleck collaborated on with Ron Hansen, this all could have been a play, but with the help of no less than eight credited cinematographers, Company is richly cinematic. It opens at a Christmas party in 1975 as Evelyn (Emily Alyn Lind) arrives in the crowded home and soon is regaling the rapt celebratory crowd with a story, and it becomes that rare large gathering where all ears are pointed in her direction as the scene switches to a rural snowy landscape and cabin in 1953. We meet Tom, an old grizzled hermit living alone deep in the Colorado mountains. But just outside in the freezing terrain lies a woman who appears to be frozen in the snow. He rescues her, takes her inside by the fire, and brings her back to life, as it were. Her name is Alice (Caylee Cowan) and she is an actress. In return for Tom’s kindness she strikes up a conversation and then relays a story she tells him.
And so our third acts begins circa 1903 where another person is found unconscious in the snow. He is taken in by a kind, welcoming couple, Rebecca (Adelaide Clemens) and Emmett (Scott McNairy). This drifter turns out to be a rather intense young man named Caleb (Atticus Affleck), a guy with dark eyes that could burn your soul, but just who is he? There have been a series of deaths that people around these parts have heard about, victims whose hearts have been taken the story goes, and that horrifying fact signals that perhaps Rebecca and Emmett may have the culprit in their home, or not. As is the case for all of this, it is the springboard for discussion, especially between Rebecca and Caleb, the latter teeming with a need for violence and vengeance as their interactions suggests. Truths will be revealed, suspicions may be confirmed, the story continues.
To say more would be to spoil the twists that come within Affleck’s oddly unstructured narrative, a freestyle filmmaking choice that doesn’t follow conventional rules of screenwriting as this film is more interested in telling stories, however they play out in the telling, whatever meaning we can get from them.
This is not to say it’s all dialogue and no action, but the brooding tone of the piece demands patience. In the end we may not know more than when it all began, but we have been given much to think about and relate to in a contempory world where the same kind of human behavior threatens to rip us apart. Words, stories, the company of others can help ease the pain that is interconnected through the first three quarters of the 20th century, and sadly still resonating right thru the first quarter of the 21st.
Apparently Affleck got this film made quickly and for little money so it was necessary to patch together crews where and when he could, thus the need for all those running the camera (including him) at different times. You would never know though as the final film is cohesive and gorgeous to look at. He is also lucky to have a cast that delivers, starting with Nolte, a fine trio of female storytellers and/or drivers, plus journeyman actors like McNairy, and Ben Mendelsohn, the latter playing a man who has an unfortunate confrontation with Caleb.
And then there is Affleck’s son, Atticus who plays Caleb in a mesmerizing performance that signals the birth of yet another acting star in the family. Apparently he didn’t have those aspirations before his father cast him after being unable to find someone who could handle this tricky role that becomes key to the whole thing working as well as it does. This isn’t a small cameo. Atticus, like the best actors, just seems a complete natural in front of the camera and creates a haunting portrait of a young man whose violent restless nature is not easy to tame, even as Clemens’ empathetic Rebecca tries. Another son, Indiana Affleck, also turns up to good, if far briefer effect.
In telling these stories, and in connecting them to a greater idea common to our lives as we live them now, Affleck doesn’t solve the world’s problems but rather it seems, against all odds, just wants to ask how we might become better people living in it.
Producers are Steven Schneider, Roy Lee, Affleck, Dan Lawler, Enso Marc, Anthony Katagas, Catherine Caylee Cowan, Sienna Oberman, K. Asher Levin, Sean Patrick O’Reilly. Ben Affleck and Matt Damon’s Artists Equity is among the producing companies listed.
Title: Company
Festival: Venice – In Competition
Director: Casey Affleck
Screenplay: Casey Affleck and Ron Hansen
Cast: Nick Nolte, Ben Mendelsohn, Adelaide Clemens, Scott McNairy, Emily Alyn Lind, Caylee Cowan, Atticus Affleck, Indiana Affleck.
Running Time: 1 hour and 35 minutes
Sales Agent: Gersh, Range, Cinetic (North America); AGC Studios and Spook Pictures (International)
