Everyone has a secret it seems, politicians, priests, heroes and saints, even fishermen who sail and, even the women who wait for them.
Writers like Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, who had their own dark secrets, made a life and a fortune, from knowing that.
MOVIE INFO
“Blow the Man Down”
Comedy, drama, mystery
Mary Beth and Priscilla Connolly attempt to cover up a gruesome run-in with a dangerous man. To conceal their crime, the sisters must go deep into the criminal underbelly of their hometown, uncovering the town’s darkest secrets.
Length: 91 minutes
MPAA rating: R for language, some violence, sexual material and brief drug use
Directors: Bridget Savage Cole, Danielle Krudy
Writers: Bridget Savage Cole, Danielle Krudy
Stars: David Coffin, David Pridemore, Adam Wolf Mayerson
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow knew that as well, and Henry knew about Maine because he was born here. It was Longfellow who wrote:
“Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.”
Welcome to Easter Cove.
In Bridget Savage Cole and Danielle Krudy’s “Blow the Man Down,” we get a Longfellow town on the rocky coast of Maine, that is both very cold and very sad.
The secrets in literature, and in the films that are made of them, are never happy but dipped in blood. I could give you a list that would tire you, but today I have to tell you about “Blow the Man Down” and the Connolly Sisters, Mary Beth (Morgan Saylor) and Priscilla (Sophie Lowe).
(“Blow the Man Down” opened the 2019 Maine Film Festival and was enjoyed by many, but many more seem to have missed it.)
The movie, filmed in the backdrop of beautiful Harpswell, starts with a Greek chorus of cold and sad fishermen singing old sea chanties, so good are they, that we are tempted to let them sing for an additional hour.
The story itself begins with the funeral of the sisters’ mother, who died with her secret in her mouth, and the bad news that they’re going to lose their beloved house.
Then the a new bad thing happens. I won’t go into the details, because it would cheat you out of your first peel of terror.
Mary Beth, the youngest, and most fractured by the mother’s death and the double dump of facing homelessness, goes to a bar to get a drink.
Every story needs a bad guy, and we’re given one of the baddest. Meet “Gorski” (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) who woos our fragile femme over whiskey and invites her to his shanty.
At the house, it all rushes to dirty unwanted sex. Mary Beth, smacked awake, runs down aisles of lobster cages to escape. Gorski pursues, corners her and prepares for his sordid act.
That’s all I’ll describe. I can tell you there’s a harpoon there and a big brick.
The sisters Connolly now face worse than a bar date gone wrong.
Have you ever had to fit a large body into a lobster box? This is where it all starts looking and sounding like Ethan Coen’s “Fargo,” a little bit. Well, actually, quite a bit.
Then comes the missing lobster knife, a large bag of cash, and the arrival of a bunch of the coolest, most wonderful three women you would ever want to spend a couple of hours with, all with their own delicious secrets:
The great June Squibb, (“Nebraska”) Annette O’Toole, (“Halt and Catch Fire”) and the magnificent Margo Martindale (“Justified”) who runs a brothel on the other side of town. Why does Easter Cove need a brothel? Sailors. Well, it’s better than a Starbucks or mall, ain’t it?
Margo, as Enid Nora Devlin the brothel owner, is pure evil and magnificently dripping in odious sweat.
Enid has kept the book of ALL the town’s secrets for years. The other women hate her, of course, so she lives upstairs in her Victorian brothel.
There’s a passel of Maine island cops here, fat and corrupt, with their share of secrets, who are joined by handsome, young, Catholic, and honest officer Justin Brennan (Will Brittain) who keeps asking questions, flirts with Priscilla Connolly and finally asks the right question.
Is “Blow” really, as many are saying, “Fargo on ice?” enough to make it fun, but not enough to take the shine off the team of Cole and Krudy, who REALLY know how to write, and REALLY know how to direct.
It’s important here to tell you that the movie won’t be on screen for 10 minutes before you discover that Todd Banhazi is a master cinematographer, who, with only one film to his credit, (“The Strange Ones”) is REALLY good.
Banhazi takes the colors and shapes, the wind, rocks and water, dark streets, stirs in the smoke and ice of this village, and gives us a filmic canvass with tones of Goya and Munch.
And the music. Oh boy, you’re going to want to rush to download this score with the fishermen baritones and all onto your phone.
“Blow the Man Down” is now streaming on Amazon Prime. Go get it.
J.P. Devine, of Waterville, is a former stage and screen actor.
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