There are troubling questions posed in Tim Blake Nelson’s effectively glum prison drama The Life and Deaths of Wilson Shedd, a film that will rank among the most overwhelmingly feel-awful experiences of this year’s Toronto film festival. It’s a story told in a disarmingly folksy manner with plucked guitar strings and down south homespun wisdom before it quietly reveals itself to be about something far more serious and startling, elements of an escape thriller but mostly an unsettling moral drama. It’s likely to upset and enrage some but even those who might feel offended will at least feel something, a quality not to be sniffed at during a festival that can often pick politeness over provocation.
It’s the new film from actor turned writer-director Nelson, whose work has often tended to confront and dissect difficult issues. He went to Auschwitz in The Grey Zone, transported Shakespearean tragedy to high school in O, and handled both rape and suicide in his debut Eye of God. It’s a fine line between grimness for the sake of grimness and being unwilling to shy away from grimness, and at times I wondered whether I was being overly prodded, whether certain scenes were bordering on exploitative. I left rattled by what I’d seen and what I was being forced to reckon with, but I think Nelson just about justifies himself and how far he goes partly because he does, in crucial moments, avoid showing more than is needed.
