Normally, when you hear a character in a film call the (in)famous philosopher Martin Heidegger “Heide-gegger,” you are to understand that this character is and will be the butt of some joke. Add a thick Western twang, and you are to further understand that this person is the sort of uneducated country bumpkin who shoots beer bottles by the creek or leers threateningly at city folk passersby in a rundown gas station.
In Tim Blake Nelson’s Leaves of Grass (2009), this character is, instead, one of the two or three sharpest in the film; and, while some of the more familiar “country bumpkin” aspects are retained, they help flesh out his personality rather than stunt it. This is one of the many features of Nelson’s screenplay that distinguish it as a well-crafted work, paired with a charmingly dynamic performance by Edward Norton.
This character is Brady Kincaid, a fun-loving pothead who has built up his own sophisticated hydroponic system for growing weed in his hometown of Little Dixie, Oklahoma. He works for a wealthy Jewish businessman named Pug Rothbaum (Richard Dreyfuss), and is being pressured to expand his activities. Brady relents, as he’s about to have a child with his loving wife (Melanie Lynskey), and wants to turn over a new leaf for their sake. Rothbaum, however, isn’t having it, especially since Brady owes him money for setting up his farm; so he orders Brady to come up to Tulsa for a chat.
Brady knows their meeting will end in only one way, but needs an alibi in order to see it through. Enter William Kincaid, or Billy: Brady’s twin brother, who teaches classical philosophy at Brown University (also played by Norton). Where Brady is extroverted, crass, and easygoing, Billy is erudite, composed and softspoken. Billy, however, wants nothing to do with his past, even going so far as to erase his Oklahoman accent. He’s about to be granted his own chair with Brown’s law department when he hears, to his shock, the news of Brady’s death (by crossbow, of all things!), prompting him to fly back home for the funeral arrangements.
But Brady, of course, isn’t dead, much to Billy’s chagrin. He just needs his brother to double as him in Little Dixie while he handles his business with Rothbaum; as well as to visit their mother, whom Billy hasn’t spoken to since he first left town. At first, Billy wants nothing to do with it, but once he meets the fetching Janet (Keri Russell), a local poet and schoolteacher, he’s given extra incentive to stay and play along with Brady’s scheme.
If the plot sounds a little wacky, rest assured, Nelson is fully aware. Given some of the grislier stakes involved in Leaves of Grass, it’s astonishing how he manages to balance the lighter elements with the more serious ones without the whole affair coming across as haphazard; there is a good deal of bloodshed, too, but it does not spring from nowhere, as the sometimes brutal actions committed by the characters are made believable by how Nelson has prepared them for the moment(s).
While it’d be a stretch to call this film “profound,” it would not be at all a stretch to say that it deals in profundities, as the characters converse on topics ranging from weed, firearms and noodling catfish to the self, epistemology, and the abstract existence of a Creator. This might be awkward in another artist’s hands, but not so with Nelson, since he does not condescend to his characters nor to the audience. So-called “hicks” are just as capable of contemplating and discussing seriously the same weighty matters that post-grads in the Ivy League do, but it takes a trained ear to ably reproduce the swings and cadences of those conversations. Luckily, Nelson is from this part of America himself, and skillfully combines lived experience with his own university training as a classicist. In this way, Leaves of Grass is akin to those films in the oeuvre of John Sayles, who similarly takes overlooked regions/peoples and has them grapple with perennial dilemmas, while also deftly balancing salt-of-the-earth humor and realism.
The dilemma explored in Leaves of Grass is that of discipline versus licentiousness, or freedom versus regulation, etc. It finds human representation in the twins, with Brady being the wild child, who uses his considerable smarts for ends which may or may not be immoral, but certainly provide him with pelf and pleasure; on the other end, Billy is all restraint, bookish to the max, even transforming his entire persona in order to better fit in with the East Coast intellectual crowd.
What is most appealing about Nelson’s screenplay is that it never capitulates to one end of the spectrum: Brady’s freedom comes at a cost to his and his loved ones’ safety, and Billy’s erudition renders him naïve to certain realities/brutalities. It is in the negotiation of these combating impulses that makes the conflict(s) of Leaves of Grass compelling, apart from its more gonzo moments. Another strength is its ability to satisfyingly resolve certain foreshadowed details—particularly in a darkly comic event relating to crossbows—that, while giving the film perhaps a too neat feel, nevertheless leaves no loose ends that would otherwise detract from the artistic whole.
The performances are all stellar, but Norton truly shines in his double role as the twins. It is less a matter of accent-accuracy—for Brady’s thick Oklahoman twang does not sound totally comfortable coming from the native East Coaster’s mouth—as it is one of embodiment, on top of the hair-and-makeup job. While Billy might be a natural fit for the actor (a Yale graduate himself), it is how he occupies Brady’s gawky affability that impresses; the trick is to create a persona who is, in many ways, fundamentally simple, without him coming across as a simpleton. Norton pulls this off with aplomb, especially during the scenes when he uses his brother’s skewed perception of him to his advantage.
Richard Dreyfuss’s Pug Rothbaum is deliciously wicked, hiding his opportunism and predatoriness behind a righteous exterior; Susan Sarandon as the twins’ mother is serviceable as the regretful Flower Child who kept too loose a rein on her sons; as is Keri Russell as the love interest, especially in a nice scene between her and Billy when they trade philosophies on passion, and she drops several lines of verse to reinforce her points. Nelson himself stars as Bolger, Brady’s best friend and righthand man. The standout among the supporting cast, however, would have to be Josh Pais’s Ken Feinman, the Jewish orthodontist who fatefully meets Billy on the plane ride over to Oklahoma. He is hilarious as a man on the brink of meltdown, desperate for any connection and/or event that might provide him a lifeline out of the financial abyss his family is in.
As for the title, it is an explicit reference to Walt Whitman’s magnum opus (and a joking nod to the film’s oh so coveted herb). Billy rejects the ethos behind Whitman’s free-verse revolution, stating a need for convention/tradition to formalize, and therefore better communicate, truth. But “formality” is often simply another mask, a diversion from certain unresolved tensions; and for all its security, it fails to save Billy from scandal, as the same petty human ills and wants running amok in rural backwaters plague the ivory tower, only now in preppy dress and lingo.
A character claims near story’s end that “we are animals,” and it’s a basic human truth not often acknowledged but daily lived—the line separating the Ivy League professor from the clever ape who grows and throws things is vaguer than normally supposed. We ought to be grateful for works of art like Nelson’s that help illustrate this reality; otherwise, we’d just be stuck with folks like Heidegger, et al.
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More from Ezekiel Yu: La vida no vale nada: On Jim Jarmusch’s “The Limits of Control” (2009), Whose Malcom X? Re-reviewing Spike Lee’s “Malcolm X” (1992), Solitude’s Remains: Review of “Ode to Nothing” (2018)