100 Movies in 2020: #16, Junebug

Families are complicated. In the 2005 movie Junebug, director Phil Morrison employs creative uses of stillness to convey the characters’ deep and poignant sense of loneliness.

• Release: 2005
• Starring: Amy Adams, Embeth Davidtz, Alessandro Nivola, Celia Weston, Scott Wilson, Ben McKenzie.
• Directed by: Phil Morrison
• Screenplay: Angus MacLachlan

Setup

As the story opens, Madeleine (Embeth Davidtz) holds a fundraiser for Jesse Jackson, Jr. at her Chicago gallery that specializes in outsider art. There, she meets George (Alessandro Nivola). They, uh, hit it off. They get married a week later but George’s family doesn’t attend. Six months later, Madeleine learns of an outsider artist who lives near George’s family in Pfafftown, NC, near Winston-Salem. They travel to North Carolina to attempt to sign the artist and to visit George’s family.

The experience couldn’t be stranger for Madeleine if she’d traveled by spaceship to another planet. George’s mother Peg (a brilliant Celia Weston) rules the house but is suspicious of and distant to sophisticated Madeleine. Dad Eugene (Scott Wilson) understands much but says little. Ashley (Amy Adams) and George’s brother Johnny (Ben McKenzie) are married high school sweethearts living with Johnny’s parents. Ashley’s pregnant, and Johnny’s not coping well, staring at illustrated lingerie ads in the newspaper and refusing to talk to anyone.

Loneliness dominates

All the characters in the family experience loneliness. To a degree, everyone is an outsider themselves. The rural and urban cultures clash, but not in the overt and stereotypical red state/blue state dynamic. It’s more subtle than that, tied to the choices each character has made.

Instead, everyone copes with frustrated expectations. Ashley longs for the joyful and romantic connection she once had with Johnny. In the absence of that, she eagerly tries to befriend Madeleine. Madeleine tries to understand and integrate into the family, but Ashley overwhelms her and Peg, suspicious of Madeleine from the start, never gives her a chance. George disappears. Peg actively dislikes Madeleine but we get the feeling that even after George and Madeleine leave, she lives a restless, empty, and dissatisfied life. Johnny, who seems to delight in his coworkers, feels entrapped and resentful when he returns home and gives everyone the silent treatment. Eugene tries to translate for Madeleine, but he knows his place in the family power dynamic and stays in his lane, seeking solace in his woodworking.

Silence stands in for loneliness

The dialogue conveys this isolation beautifully, but I’ll reflect on that when I read the screenplay. Director Phil Morrison takes advantage of film’s visual medium to convey this sense of loneliness through silent still images. Scenes of the family are intercut with scenes of the landscape–trees and fields, or a neighbor cutting the grass–or empty interiors, like a tidy, unused dining room. These scenes inject profound stillness that slows the pace of the narrative. These scenes don’t translate as the companionable silence of two people close to each other who can rest in one another’s presence. Instead, these scenes convey the sense of an awkward pause in conversation. Thus, the next scene involving dialogue feels like a character’s forced attempt to keep the conversation going. They make efforts, but fail to connect.

At other times, we see characters alone in the house who overhear dialogue from another room. The muffled dialogue, like in the clip below, serves to further underscore the characters’ isolation. Not only are the characters excluded physically, they’re excluded mentally because they can’t hear what’s going on in the next room. Often, that exclusion comes by choice.

Writing lesson from Junebug

Get creative with stillness.

Stillness stands in well for loneliness. Find creative ways to use stillness to heighten characters’ isolation. Overheard but muffled dialogue, juxtaposition of silence with dialogue, and scenes with no people at all, or people viewed from a distance, can all convey isolation in powerful ways.