Little Accidents

I wasn't planning to attend Little Accidents when it screened at the Seattle International Film Festival. With 450 films from which to choose, a film about a coal mining disaster sounded depressing. However, when I was sent a free pass from SIFF, I went anyway.

Not only was I was pleasantly surprised by Sara Colangelo's debut feature film, I was moved by it. Little Accidents is the type of film that stays with you long after the lights come up.

Although it is a coal mine disaster that sets the events of the film in motion, the action begins months after the accident, as Amos Jenkins (Boyd Holbrook) returns to his life in the small West Virginia town after convalescing from injuries that he sustained in the accident. He is the sole survivor.

Life is anything but normal as Amos finds himself torn between telling the truth about the cause of the accident, and keeping his mouth shut, which will dishonor his ten friends who died. If he testifies that management's cost-cutting decisions led to the disaster, the mine will be closed and his friends and family will be left without any way to feed their families.

Just as the town is beginning to deal with the loss of the miners, the son of one of the mine's managers (Josh Lucas) goes missing. Is it retaliation or a freak accident? Young Owen, played by Jacob Loftland (Mud), who is the son of a killed miner, has the answer, but he deals with his own struggle to reveal the truth.

The character-driven film follows the seemingly parallel story lines of Amos, Owen and Diane Doyle (Elizabeth Banks), the mother of the missing boy, but eventually the parallel lives begin to intertwine as they find themselves connected by fate.

The performances by everyone in this film, especially Holbrook and Loftland, are superb. A touching scene between Amos and Diane outside a convenience store nearly left me in tears.

Although I felt the relationship between Amos and Dianne could have been developed further, I was fully satisfied by the completion of the plot lines and left feeling blown away by the entire experience, which was enhanced by the attendance of the director, Colangelo.

Colangelo directed a 2010 short by the same name, which deals with issues of the working class. She wanted to set the expanded feature film in a mining community, after being moved by so many recent coal-mining accidents that she was unable to get off her mind.

One interesting piece of information that Colangelo provided was that the movie was shot in 24 days and entirely in film, in order to capture the grittiness of the subject matter. Kodak donated half of the film.

Little Accidents isn't so much a film about a coal mining disaster as it is a film about loss and how we choose to deal with the tragic events that occur in our lives. Of all the films I saw at SIFF this year, this is my favorite.

The film is set to be released in January 2015. Go see it!

"You gonna be the big shot that closes down the Bonford Coal Company? We lost men in there. I'd keep to myself, if I was you. Just keep telling them you don't remember. Try to get back to work, back to being productive."

You made plans for a cozy movie night ? Are you sitting all comfortably in your seat buried under bags of chips and a bottle of Coca-Cola at your fingertips? Then I advise you to put on another movie than "Little accidents" because this movie won't make you happy. Not even a little bit. It shows a series of truly sad and depressing circumstances and occurrences. A fatal mine accident leaving 10 miners dead, an unfortunate incident with consequences, the wrenching dilemmas, the immense grief after losing a loved one, not knowing what's the fate of a missing person and the misunderstanding within a marriage. It's all included in this social drama, set in a dying town that looks so gray as if it was covered by a layer of coal dust. A story about two people in this "village without a future" whose lives run parallel, without them realizing it, with several points of contact : a dramatic event, the grueling truth that they keep secret and the decision whether or not to reveal it. Eventually, these parallel lines intersect and end in the same way.

"Little Accidents" is a melodrama in which various interest groups are diametrically opposed to each other. On the one hand you have the working people whose lives depend on whether or not they close the Bonford Coal Company. And on the other you have the representatives of the victims and the unions who want to sue the company for negligence and pursuit of profit on the back of the underprivileged workers, making them work in hazardous conditions. Just like Amos Jenkins (Boyd Holbrook) did. He's the sole survivor of the mine accident. After a rehab, he returned to his town in West Virginia and finds himself immediately confronted with this dilemma. He's constantly harassed by both interest groups. At the same time we meet Owen Briggs (Jacob Lofland), son of one of the victims in this mine disaster. His mother Kendra (Chloë Sevigny) tries to pick up the thread again, while Owen takes care of his younger brother James (Beau Wright), an endearing little boy who has Down syndrome. Although Kendra overwhelms both boys with electronic gizmo's, Owen is still struggling to integrate into the community and seeks the company of a group of young people who in the end only bully and exploit him.

The central figure of this group of young people is JT Doyle (Travis Tope), son of Bill (Josh Lucas) and Diane Doyle (Elizabeth Banks), leader and the one who turns up to be missing one day. The only one who knows the true facts about this disappearance, is Owen. But anxiously he keeps his mouth shut about it. This ensures the parents of JT facing a period of long waiting for the outcome of the investigation. The reason why this secret remains with Owen, is the fact that JT's father is one of the board members of the coal mine, who could be responsible for the fatal accident. Probably Owen thinks he could be accused of acting in an act of revenge. The moment the statement of lightning will be seen as untrue, his position as a director of this company will be practically untenable. Diane suffers the most under the disappearance of her son, while father Bill launches himself entirely into his work, and feels more and more neglected which leads to a surprising affair. The result is that the lives of Amos, Owen and Diana get intermingled because of these circumstances.

It's a pretty depressing film. Don't expect smiling faces. It feels more like a competition in "who looks the most depressing". Holbrook plays a surprising role as the half-crippled laborer who's facing a difficult choice. The choice between the relatives of the victims and the non-affected who still benefit from the fact that the only industry in their town still exists. The helplessness and at the same time the shame of being the only survivor, is written all over his face. "It was a waste to save me,if you think about it. I ain't got no family, no kids."as he admitted himself. Also Lofland (known for his role as a helpful teen in "Mud") plays an outstanding role. That intolerable burden he's carrying is played by him in a masterful way. Even in the quiet moments you can see that suffering. Elizabeth Banks (known as Effie Trinket in "The Hunger Games" and as Lydia Mercer in "Man on a Ledge") manages to bring a difficult role to a successful conclusion. She has no problems to bring a mix of diverse emotions: pride, despair, reconciliation, loneliness and dejection. All in all a talented cast.

"Little accidents" isn't a perfect film and has a tendency to become cheesy. It's only sadness you witness and some used themes aren't very original. After a while I got the feeling that it surely was overly packed with gloomy events. But in retrospect you can only admit that this is just part of everyday life. However, the lived through renditions and worked out characters ensure that this gloomy and dark film still makes a good impression. In other words, a wonderful film that shows how disaster can strike mercilessly.

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This film tells the story of a mining town struck by a tragic mining accident. The after effects have far racing consequences to the residents in the whole town.

"Little Accidents" is a very dark film, so dark that it dragged my mood down within minutes of watching it. It captures hopelessness, helplessness and desperation of many individuals in the town, no matter what social stratum they belong to. The sadness lingers on throughout the film, because of unfinished businesses which should provide suspense but instead gives a haunting atmosphere. The ending gives a little closure to some of the subplots but not all, leaving businesses unfinished. I am so saddened by the film, it's very powerful.

I appreciate there may be temptation to "feminize" certain narratives but a mining disaster film is not one of them when the narrative's main tension is whether or not the protagonist male is or is not going to say one thing or the other. That was the tension in the film that was poorly developed in order to develop a side-bar that of itself was not developed either but was there in my view to justify Elizabeth Banks' character's errant behavior. As it was, her husband's character barely got a look in, despite his being blamed for the fandango, facing ruination and despite having to deal with the same (side-bar) loss as Elizabeth Banks.

I am not sure what the film was trying to say and therefore I give it only a 7. This said, the performances were super and the photography very impressive. The director (who also wrote this) has a very strong talent in my view but must resist the urge to feminize narratives to the point of it losing focus on what the central drama is: men losing lives and whether the mine will survive (to the relief of the remaining miners) or close on account of compensation payments that will bankrupt it (to the relief of the families caught)

"What do you think it's like to die?" Owen (Jacob Lofland)

It's a given that tragic death in a small town stays forever, impinging on virtually every life now and hereafter. First-time writer-director Sara Colangelo's Little Accidents, set in a coal town, echoes The Sweet Hereafter's frozen aftermath of children's deaths aboard a bus plunging into a pond. Both involve decisions to reveal or not the culpable parties; both intercut among those players who are most affected by the tragedy.

Young Owen (Jacob Lofland) witnesses the death of JT (Travis Tope) and hides the truth. JT is the son of manager Bill Doyle (Josh Lucas) and Owen is a deceased coal miner's son. The accident that killed his dad and nine others is under investigation as the union fights to suppress testimony from conflicted survivor Amos (Boyd Holbrook, who reminds me of Keith Carradine) that would incriminate the coal company and shut down the mine.

You can see the inter-connections, as is true in any small town, and the inherent conflicts, exacerbated by the closeness and the sometimes illicit connections, such as JT's mom, Diana Doyle (Elizabeth Banks), and Amos. Colangelo keeps the plot slowly moving ahead while some characters and events border on the formulaic. When Owen helps Diana with her garden, the plot takes an unfortunate contrivance tack. Yet the drama is still effectively bound to us as figurative for communal responsibility and domino-effect relationships and tragedies.

Cinematographer Rachel Morrison effectively creates the working-class milieu, much as in Out of the furnace, in part because she uses a great deal of natural light reinforced by old-fashioned 35mm film. It's not a gloomy world, just one dominated by grey skies and dim futures. No sunshine can mitigate the sense of loss pervading the town. These Accidents are hardly little.