Mark Reviews Movies: STILLWATER

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Review by Mark Dujsik | July 29, 2021

The plot of co-writer/director Tom McCarthy's Stillwater is a mystery. A young woman is in prison for a crime she insists she did not commit, and it's up to her father to find the person whom his daughter says did commit the crime. There are a few complications, of course, but the most important one points to the reason this film succeeds as more than a twisty, morally ambiguous mystery. The father is a perennial screw-up, although the daughter puts it in slightly more colorful terms.

Bill Baker (Matt Damon), the father, is a screw-up—but not in the way that this story becomes a comedy of errors or some kind of farce. There are some comedic elements to this tale, because Bill is something of a good ol' boy, living the extent of his life in the eponymous college town in Oklahoma, and the daughter is in prison in Marseille, France.

Bill doesn't know French. He doesn't understand the customs. He's convinced that the law and justice are of paramount virtues to a society, so when the daughter's lawyer says that she has no intention of looking into the daughter's discovery of new information about her case, Bill decides to take matters into his own hands.

It's actually less about the ideals of fairness and the truth for Bill, though. He doesn't have much time or desire to think about such lofty things. His fight is simply because Bill is a stubborn, old-fashioned man of the country, who doesn't know when to stop, say no, or accept that things sometimes don't turn out the way one wants them to.

The film, written by McCarthy and a trio of others (Thomas Bidegain, Marcus Hinchey, and Noé Debré), quickly and significantly establishes itself, less as a mystery or thriller (although the plotting ensures that it becomes both—gradually but inevitably in terms of the latter) and more as a character piece. It's not wholly about who actually killed the daughter's roommate/girlfriend, the hunt for that suspect, and what Bill's going to do when he finally finds the guy. It is, though, entirely about the kind of man Bill was, is, and, most likely, always will be—no matter how hard he tries to change his circumstances, his choices, and himself.

We meet Bill in his hometown of Stillwater, where he works odd construction jobs, which are currently few and far between, and volunteers to clean up sites hit by tornadoes. There was a time when he was an oil rigger, and he still takes pride in that career, even though it's long gone and likely never coming back now.

Bill has a bit of a sordid past himself. He has been in prison. He used to drink and use drugs. He's out of prison, as well as clean and sober, now, but he's also strapped for cash and a widower. We learn that Bill's wife committed suicide, although we don't know if that was before or after Bill's addictions began. It almost doesn't matter, mainly because Bill doesn't want it to. He's past all of that, and that's the only thing that matters.

All of this information comes fairly early into the story, which follows Bill in his daily routine, through a somewhat uncomfortable situation with his mother-in-law (played by Deanna Dunagan), and to Marseille, where the father is having a scheduled visit—one he never misses, according to the prison records—with his daughter Allison (Abigail Breslin). Allison's story is well-known in the area: the American student, accused and convicted of murdering a local college student, who was also Allison's girlfriend.

She has four years remaining on her prison sentence, but Allison is convinced someone else committed the crime. A rumor going around seems to confirm her suspicions.

Bill is supposed to leave this to Allison's attorney. He's not supposed to even know what Allison has learned. He doesn't leave it and has someone read his daughter's letter to her lawyer anyway. With the help of Virgine (Camille Cottin), a kind single mother whom he meets by helping the woman's daughter Maya (Lilou Siauvaud), Bill, always donning jeans and work boots and flannel shirts, starts tracking down leads and looking for the real murderer.

If the plot seems a bit routine, it admittedly is, but it's also not really the point of the film. This is about a man whose stubbornness—for good and, even when it seems to be good from his own perspective, for ill—defines everything he does, every thought and plan that comes into his mind, and every relationship he starts, has, and inevitably, so it seems, ruins. From his bulky physique to the one-track mentality, Damon inhabits Bill with little care for what we might think of him, because that's simply the way of this character.

What's fascinating is how the screenplay seems to establish the search for the real killer, only to become fully sidetracked when the hunt and, hence, Bill's relationship with Allison collapses. Bill appears to embrace to a new normal of sorts—finding a job, living but not (at first) being romantic with Virgine, becoming almost like a father to Maya. It's this new mode—finding some kind of consistency and foundation, as well as trying to reconcile with Allison—that puts Bill, his addictive personality, and his capacity to change (if that ability even exists within him) to the real test.

Answers about the murder and Allison's asserted innocence emerge, and while those revelations are important to the plot of Stillwater, McCarthy ensures that the focus is always on Bill. What he discovers is less significant than what he does—or doesn't do—in the search for and about that information.

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