Middle of Nowhere
First screened in October 2012 / Most recently screened and reviewed in February 2022
Director: Ava DuVernay. Cast: Emayatzy Corinealdi, Omari Hardwick, David Oyelowo, Lorraine Toussaint, Edwina Findley, Troy Curvey III, Sharon Lawrence, Maya Gilbert. Screenplay: Ava DuVernay. Twitter Capsule:
Unfolds with the impeccable ease of a beach read, but writing, acting, versatile lensing give it uncommon depth.
VOR:④
Room to grow stylistically, but crafty, emotion-rich directness is worth valuing. Rare looks at prison (and family?) as a shared sentence.
Ava DuVernay has made so many projects that mean a lot to me, but this is the one I hold most dear. I remember being in an almost empty cinema at a 10pm show during Middle of Nowhere's one-week run in a downtown Chicago multiplex and having that feeling when you cleave instantly to an artist and expect to keep following all their choices and directions, provided they keep getting the opportunities they need.
DuVernay has proved in the decade since to be an almost unparalleled opportunity generator in Hollywood, not just for herself but for so, so many other people. In this she's the antithesis of Ruby (Emayatzy Corinealdi, tremendous), at least within the narrative timeline of Middle of Nowhere. Nathaniel indelibly described Ruby to me as a character trying hard not to have an arc, and it's clear that all the major department heads on the film agree with him. There's a reason why the sad and careworn blue/white/gray palette of Ruby's first visit to her incarcerated husband Derek (Omari Hardwick) follows her for such a long time as the movie unfolds. There's also a reason—a few, as it turns out—why Ruby's flashbacks to better times with Derek are almost always the same images. Either she's used up her other memories, the same way the shots themselves often look dimmed or faded, like photos too often handled, or else she doesn't have as many reaffirming memories as she claims to, or as she wishes she did, of the man who may well be the love of her life.
Middle of Nowhere makes the point stylistically about how the partners and relatives of prisoners wind up feeling incarcerated, too. Ruby further guarantees that feeling by refusing to accept from her intimates or from anyone that Derek might be doomed to serve his full sentence, and may not be his own best advocate. She denies even harder any signal from her mind or body or sister or mother that she might need something else than to wait around indefinitely for Derek, even if it means declining other paths, other plans, other loves, other chances at fuller self-realization. DuVernay is too generous a storyteller to castigate or pathologize Ruby for having her heart set on a prospect that doesn't seem to be drawing any closer, but she's also flinty enough to pose stirring questions about the limits of unconditional devotion and about the potential tolls of how we can misuse the years we've got, which sprint by fast even when, as in Ruby's case, they sure seem slow.
Middle of Nowhere is a huge leap forward even from DuVernay's promising debut, I Will Follow. Bradford Young's lensing is characteristically lustrous, even when the story confines him within a narrow color range or expressive bandwidth. (By the same token, with newly sensuous colors and sinuous camera movements, he makes sure we feel it when Ruby starts slipping through the bars she's erected around her own life.) A tantamount sign of the movie's strength is that an ostensible B-plot about the fragile flirtations between Ruby and her regular bus driver Brian (David Oyelowo, released into low-key heartthrob mode) has the richness and nuance of a principal storyline.
That's even truer of the scenes capturing the fraught, painful, and refreshingly unspecified family dynamics among Ruby, her single-mom sister Rosie (Edwina Findley), and their quietly seething mother Ruth, unforgettably conveyed by Lorraine Toussaint with all of her weighty charisma and tangible presence of mind. Ruth thinks she knows why her daughters keep her at arm's length; she eventually spits out her guess, imploring a response, any response. The film neither confirms nor denies her rationale, but the actors, in concert with DuVernay, manage to portray Ruth as pushing too hard while fully explicating and even defending her motive for doing so. Middle of Nowhere spends relatively little time with this trio, so you'd forgive some short-cuts in their scenes... but filmmakers, this is how you keep your subplots within their proper proportions without in the slightest degree diminishing their pungency, mystery, and force. Grade:A–
(I originally wrote this capsule on Letterboxd, where you can comment.)
