{"id":3262,"date":"2018-06-22T12:00:10","date_gmt":"2018-06-22T12:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thunderbird.tv\/2018\/06\/22\/never-steady-never-still-film-review\/"},"modified":"2018-06-22T12:00:10","modified_gmt":"2018-06-22T12:00:10","slug":"never-steady-never-still-film-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thunderbird.tv\/2018\/06\/22\/never-steady-never-still-film-review\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Never Steady, Never Still’: Film Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Hollywood Reporter\/\u00a0John DeFore<\/em><\/p>\n

Kathleen Hepburn’s feature debut stars Shirley Henderson as a mother coping with Parkinson’s disease.<\/p>\n

One of several breakthrough indies of late to have started life as a short film, Kathleen Hepburn’s\u00a0Never Steady, Never Still<\/em>\u00a0goes to a place where life is not easy, then seeks out those who have it tougher than others. Bleak but sometimes beautiful, the performance-driven feature debut is meatier than its slender plot might suggest, with a strong sense of place and an unsentimental frankness about conditions many filmmakers would milk for sympathy.<\/p>\n

Shirley Henderson plays Judy, a fifty-something mother whose voice \u2014\u00a0heard in voice-over before we see her face \u2014\u00a0suggests a little girl reading a weary adult’s lines: “My first child died inside me…death is a gift from God.” Judy has lived with Parkinson’s disease for years, and is part of a Parkinson’s community that is surprisingly large for this part of British Columbia; it seems toxic runoff from a now-defunct mill may have caused a local cluster. Judy’s husband, Ed (Nicholas Campbell), notes the tidy circle here \u2014 he’s using all the income he earned at the mill to pay for meds to assuage an illness the mill created. But that bitter line is the picture’s loudest acknowledgment of class concerns here, and when Judy goes to meetings of her neighbors with the disease, it’s to share coping strategies, not to plan political or legal action.<\/p>\n

Judy and Ed have one child, 19-year-old Jamie (Theodore Pellerin), whose local job options are so slim, Ed pushes him toward work on a far-off oil rig. The quiet, unassertive kid is ill-suited to the macho atmosphere and physical demands out there \u2014\u00a0in a Terrence Malick-y bit of VO, we hear him meditate on childhood memories as he does his job \u2014\u00a0but he slogs through until he is called home: Ed has been killed by a heart attack.<\/p>\n

With the exception of occasional writerly voice-overs, Hepburn maintains an observational approach to her characters, watching Judy as she shakes her way through daily chores and Jaime as he copes with loneliness. Even Jaime’s discovery of a packet of cocaine serves only indirectly as a plot device, prompting him to leave his work site when he otherwise mightn’t have mustered the will. Their lives may be quietly miserable, acknowledging that many of us endure life more often than we live it, but the beauty Hepburn finds in her northwestern setting tempers that message somewhat.<\/p>\n

In its final half hour, the script inches toward melodrama, watching as Jamie makes an awkward attempt to romance a local girl, mindless of the consequences this distraction might have for his mother. Instead of feeling cheap, the sequence is the most captivating stretch of the film, making us briefly feel that we’re living these lives instead of just bearing witness to them.<\/p>\n

Production companies: Christie Street Creative, Experimental Forest Films
\nDistributor: levelFILM
\nCast: Shirley Henderson, Theodore Pellerin, Mary Galloway, Nicholas Campbell
\nDirector-Screenwriter: Kathleen Hepburn
\nProducers: James Brown, Tyler Hagan
\nExecutive producers: Lori Lozinski, Carol Whiteman
\nDirector of photography: Norm Li
\nProduction designers: Liz Cairns, Sophie Jarvis
\nCostume designers: Mia Fiddis, Ariana Preece
\nEditor: Simone Smith
\nComposer: Ben Fox
\nCasting directors: Kara Eide, Kris Woz<\/em><\/p>\n

107 minutes<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Hollywood Reporter\/\u00a0John DeFore Kathleen Hepburn’s feature debut stars Shirley Henderson as a mother coping with Parkinson’s disease. One of several breakthrough indies of late to have started life as a short film, Kathleen Hepburn’s\u00a0Never Steady, Never Still\u00a0goes to a place where life is not easy, then seeks out those who have it tougher than … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n'Never Steady, Never Still': Film Review - Thunderbird Entertainment<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/thunderbird.tv\/2018\/06\/22\/never-steady-never-still-film-review\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"'Never Steady, Never Still': Film Review - Thunderbird Entertainment\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Hollywood Reporter\/\u00a0John DeFore Kathleen Hepburn’s feature debut stars Shirley Henderson as a mother coping with Parkinson’s disease. 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