Landlocked
**Seen at the 2021 Atlanta Film Festival.
“Landlocked” is a frustrating movie, because it’s heart is- ultimately- in the right place, and it does a lot to get to its climax, but I’m not sure if I entirely feel as though it earns said climax. It’s certainly a sincere film, and that’s why we go with it through till the end, but it seems like there’s one genuine moment missing where the main character makes a decision that might have been better served if it had been spelled out a bit more than it is. I still liked much of the film, and what it wants to say, however.
One of the worst things we can do is hold on to resentments against those who were closest to us, especially if they don’t necessarily deserve it. This is especially true with family. I’ve been up front to family members trying to justify negative emotions towards someone where, in the long run, they don’t make sense to hold on to them anymore. This isn’t to say that Nick, the main character in Timothy Hall’s drama, isn’t justified for some resentment towards his father- now a transgender woman- but as they drive to St. Simon’s to scatter his mother’s ashes to sea, it’s obvious that Briana is trying, and Nick could afford to relieve himself of some of the stress and tension he holds on to in this movie.
Nick (Dustin Gooch) is struggling, when the film opens. He’s trying to get a restaurant off the ground in a few months, and he is finding it difficult to keep it together with the people helping him put it together; he unloads on a contractor, and when he’s told he’s not sure if his idea will catch on in his home of Smyrna, Georgia, his frustration is understandable. He has a wife, Abby (Ashlee Heath), and a young son he needs to support; the one thing he doesn’t want to do is become his father, who left he and his mother many years before. Nick’s mother has passed away recently, and he has yet to scatter the ashes; he wants to on St. Simon’s. He’s had a dilemma hanging over him, however; he hasn’t spoken his father- now Briana (Delia Kropp)- in a long time, and while he wants to let her know that her ex-wife died, Nick doesn’t want to make it a big thing. And yet, and Abby’s suggestion, he invites Briana to meet him at St. Simon’s to scatter the ashes. Briana doesn’t drive, though, and she doesn’t feel comfortable flying or taking the bus at her age. So Nick agrees to go to Arkansas to pick Briana up, and they’ll drive together. The question is whether Nick can put his resentment aside, and try to understand Briana to make the experience beneficial and healing for both.
As difficult as it is to let go of resentments, seeing genuine change in people is just as hard, if not harder. Nick holds on to this image of his father so hard it’s difficult to see Briana as a genuine and authentic person, not in a transphobic way (although he does misgender her to his wife in phone calls), but as someone who is not a reflection of the person he’s had in his mind for so long. Briana is someone who, now with the opportunity at a second chance to connect with Nick, wants to take it, and she is sincere is who she is in dealing with him. Nick is being unreasonably hard on her, but that’s partially because he’s been hard on himself over the years. Rather than become his own person, he’s worried about defining himself by the failures of his parents to not stay together, and while it’s certainly understandable, it’s also caused him considerable tension in his life, and is threatening a second chance he has with Briana. This is part of why Hall’s film frustrates me, because he lays out the dilemmas for the characters successfully, and gets good performances from the actors, but it feels like he takes a short cut to the ending we’re all expecting. That being said, however, there’s too much he has in this film that’s worth saying to dismiss it outright. The film remains perceptive and forces us to confront parts of ourselves that we might not be ready to confront yet; that’s a valuable thing for a movie to do.
