The forgotten family drama that you did not realize that Billy Bob Thornton de Landman

As a film buff, one of my favorite things to do is to rediscover underwater and forgotten jewels directed or written by great Hollywood actors. It amounts to finding gold in places where you have walked a thousand times before, but I have never bored to look at them closely. This is how I discovered the fascinating historic masterpiece of Robert Redford “Quiz” a few years ago, and in the same way that I found the family drama of Richard Pearce in 1996, “A Family Thing”, written by Billy Bob Thornton and Tom Epperson. Thornton and Epperson have in fact collaborated on several scenarios – including the Criminal Cult Classic film “One False Move” and the Mystery Horror by Sam Raimi “The Gift” – throughout their careers. “A Family Thing” came just before the famous beginnings of director of the first, “Sling Blade”, for which he wrote and won an Oscar in 1997.

I raise “Sling Blade” because the film shares important roots with “A Family Thing”. The two films concern the Arkansans to face painful losses and hard truths. In the latter, Earl Pilcher (Robert Duvall), a simple man of a small town in Arkansas, must say goodbye to his sick mother on his death bed, who leaves behind a curious letter to let her son know that she was not his biological mother. Her true my maid was their maid, Willa Mae, a black woman who was raped by the White Father of Earl and who died by giving her birth. As a man in sixties (who lived all his life thinking that he was white), the news crashes the whole foundation of Earl’s World. The letter also indicates that he has a half-brother named Ray (James Earl Jones), a police officer living with his family in Chicago. And the wish of the death bed of Earl’s mother is for him to find and know his brother.

Earl is torn apart by what to do, but it is too decent of a slaughter to ignore the final wish of his mother. He therefore packs his truck with the ambivalent feelings that turn in his heart and head for the big city to find answers.

I know what you think: today, a film like this would have an implacable Oscar campaign that could quickly transform it into Schmaltz, stressing how a Redneck is reconciled and kisses his half-nose in his age. Perhaps they could also have done so in the 90s, but fortunately, it is not the main objective of “a family thing”. Of course, Earl is in conflict on its newly discovered origin which confuses all its identity, but despite all its anger and its resentment, it makes an effort to know Ray even if it is hostile and injured towards him at the beginning.

Duvall plays Earl with pride and virility, but finds a way to let kindness and vulnerability infiltrate through this hard shell that he has been wearing for 60 years. He is as volatile and angry as anyone who would be in his place after such a revelation, but also respectful and sufficiently considerate not to blame his brother (and his family) for sins of himself (in particular that of his father). Given Duvall’s multilayer performance, it is not so surprising that the seed of the story came from him (according to Epperson), having wanted to play a character at a naughty for a while. But that would not work as well as that without Jones, which gives life to the kind of old, strict but tender heart, that you no longer see much.

When they meet, Ray hates Earl because he always blame him for the death of his mother. But he gradually warms man because he feels that his intentions and his emotions are pure – from a place of confusion, curiosity and loss. There is a scene where the two men share stories from their childhood, the Korean War in which they served and the losses they have undergone. They open in a way that makes their differences, hatred and skin color. They speak like two human beings connected by blood but separated by time, trying to find common ground and build a link. And when they do, it looks like an old Hollywood magic that caresses the soul as nothing else. They have no agendas, subsequent motivations or something other than a connection. It is a significant cinema for its best.

I could not continue without mentioning Irma P. Hall, who plays the blind and wise aunt of the brothers and wise, helping them to find a resolution even if she has to scold and force them to put aside their bitterness and pain and act like the good brothers. It is the key to history, the bridge that connects and neutralizes the racial fracture, teaching its nephews (and us) as reconciliation and forgiveness are as vital for life as the tunes that we will breathe. The scene where she tells the night of the birth of Earl is both beautiful and heartbreaking, the final boost that Ray and Earl need to fully accept and appreciate as a brothers. He also perfectly puts the endless ending and peaceful end while the two return home, where their life started, to pay tribute to the woman that none of them knew or had really enough time to spend. No big word is said, but their simple gestures are eloquent enough to capture the sorrow and the heat which vibrate each of their movements. After 60 years, they make peace with their past and each other.

It’s a shame Thornton and Epperson do not work much together these days (their last co-written scenario was “Jayne Mansfield’s because”) of 2012), but it also makes us neglected jewels like “a family thing” more for this reason. A small traditional, soft and endearing film that never tries too hard to play on our heart ropes, and in return, this is much better achieved than most family dramas on broken and distant relationships.