Mark Reviews Movies: GOD'S CREATURES

God's Creatures, A24

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Review by Mark Dujsik | September 29, 2022

There are no secrets in a small town. There are only the things of which no one speaks. That's one of the truths of the story of God's Creatures, which is about secrets that everyone knows, lies that nobody really believes, and something in the air, the water, the broad feeling of neighborliness that ensures no one says what really needs to be said. Everyone's too busy worrying about their own business to care what's happening to anyone else.

Everything looks idyllic in this coastal Irish village, where a fish packing plant provides all the jobs that the actual fishing industry can't cover. It doesn't take too long into Shane Crowley screenplay, though, to portray one tragedy and hint at more to come. In the early morning hours of this place, a dog locked in a car is barking. The animal's owner is nowhere in sight, and as fishermen amble about the coast, nobody takes notice or bothers to check on the source of barks and cries. That's somebody else's problem, apparently.

We then meet an ordinary family in town. It's made up of Aileen (Emily Watson), her husband Con (Declan Conlon), their adult daughter Erin (Toni O'Rourke), the daughter's newborn son, and the husband's father Paddy (Lalor Roddy), who is silent and in a nearly catatonic state after a medical issue a few years ago.

Aileen is a floor manage at the packing plant, and Erin works the conveyor lines, checking and preparing fish and oysters, with so many other women, such as her best friend since childhood Sarah (Aisling Franciosi). Con and his father once farmed oysters, but when Paddy's health failed him, Con couldn't keep up the work on his own. Everyone's just trying to get by, and as long as nothing upsets the appearance of order and contentment, they look as if they're doing a fine enough job at it.

A couple of changes happen in quick succession. First, there's the matter of the barking dog, whose owner was a fisherman and the son of Mary (Marion O'Dwyer), one of the plant workers and Aileen's friend. He drowned while out in the water, and while no one who heard the dog barking might have done something in time to save him, there's a strange superstition in town that suggests nobody could have helped him, even if they found him in danger.

Nobody learns to swim in this village, and it has nothing to do with some idea that preparing for the worst will somehow summon its arrival. No, it's because no one wants to be in the position of being capable of helping a drowning person. That's a dangerous endeavor, after all, and why should someone risk his or her own life when—to put it as bluntly as the belief suggests—the drowning is that other person's business anyway?

The second event is the unexpected return of Aileen and Con's son Brian (Paul Mescal), who went off to Australia for a new life away from this place but came upon hard times there. He's back to his old, familiar life to work, and Aileen couldn't be happier. This is a woman, after all, who admits she couldn't bear letting a baby Brian cry, as the doctor insisted so the child could learn to soothe himself, and while he might not be a mama's boy, she is definitely her sweet boy's mama.

Some, of course, will wonder where the plot is in all of this, and that's the wrong way to think about co-directors Saela Davis and Anna Rose Holmer's film. There is something of a plot, to be sure, but the main point of the story is in the way it establishes these characters, which the screenplay does with a lot of subtle exchanges (such the thing about Brian as a baby and that discussion of the local superstition) and the actors portray with a lot of quietly loaded looks. More importantly, the filmmakers pinpoint the persistent attitude of keeping to oneself, ignoring the troubles of others, and acting as if nothing is wrong—no matter how much might really be wrong—that keeps things looking comfortable, content, and perfectly ordinary. The biggest lies, after all, are the ones we tell ourselves to maintain some notion of order in our lives.

That plot, such as it is, revolves around a night out at the local pub, where Aileen and Brian celebrate his return, cheer his decision to restart the family oyster farm, and quickly discuss the notion of some kind of reconciliation between the son and his father, each of whom resents the other for reasons that don't need to be explained to be felt. After spotting Sarah at the bar, Brian sticks around while Aileen returns home. A few days later, a woman has made an accusation of assault against Brian, and without any request or prompting from her son, she lies that he was home that night.

There's little, then, in that regard, but the film creates a definitive mood and sense of doom through its oppressive atmosphere (The encroaching grimness of Chayse Irvin's cinematography) and the united skill of its performances (Watson reveals Aileen's crisis of conscience in every look, while Mescal picks away the charm from his roguishly charming first impressions, and Franciosi becomes the wounded but determined heart of the real story—the one others don't want to hear). God's Creatures presents a world of living, breathing lies and, as one character puts it during a devastating monologue at the end, truths so ever-present but invisible that they might as well be ghosts. They do haunt here—and quite effectively.

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