Middle of Nowhere (2012)
Directed by Ava DuVernay
AFFRM/Participant Media, 101 minutes, R (language)
★★★★
Each year some of the most creative and intelligent independent American films are shown at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah. The sad reality is that a lot of really terrific films win prizes at Sundance but are seldom seen outside of the festival circuit. One of them was Middle of Nowhere.
There have been several movies made with that title, but the one I’m talking about was directed by the talented Ava DuVernay, who won a director’s award at Sundance. She and several of her actors were also feted at various festivals that spotlight Black films. DuVernay, a Los Angeles native, turned her lens and pen–she wrote the script–at the carcel state. Statistics show that 35 percent of American prison inmates are Black men, though they are just 13 percent of the overall population.
Middle of Nowhere references the location of the correctional facility in which Derek (Omari Hardwick) is pulling an eight-year sentence for unspecified crimes. DuVernay filmed the prison scenes at USP Victorville, which is roughly 100 miles from Compton where Derek’s wife Ruby (Emayatzy) lives. She’s a nurse who is in medical school studying to become a doctor. Derek’s arrest puts a serious crimp in her plans. Derek assures Ruby that he’s both devoted to her and that he’s a passive victim of circumstance. The long commute by bus to visit him behind bars will eventually lead her to drop out of school, a decision–along with her marriage to Derek–that leads to estrangement from her mother Ruth (Lorraine Toussaint) and her sister Rosie (Edwina Findley). A furious Ruby becomes a relentless crusader working for Derek’s early release.
A small number of viewers complained that Middle of Nowhere is slow and weak as a drama. They missed the point. DuVernay’s prison sequences–the journey from Compton, the barren desert landscape, the cold efficiency of check-ins and frisks, rolled coils of razor wire, electronic rows of maximum security doors–are so well done as to suggest a gritty prison drama. Ditto bodily injuries to Derek that he insists are not serious. The ambience and suggestions of block violence are chilling, but this is not Derek’s story; it’s Ruby’s.
DuVernay does not suggest that justice was subverted or done. This is an insider film, but one of the mind, not the clink. It probes the toll Derek’s imprisonment takes on Ruby. She has sidetracked her career, alienated her family, and lost friends to the point that her only real solace is the kindness of the bus driver, Brian (David Oyelowo). He is clearly attracted to Ruby, but he’s also sympathetic and gentle. Ruby is at the point where she needs to believe that Derek was, as he insists, just a guy who got “caught up” in stuff that he neither planned nor initiated. But what if–as Derek’s friend Rashad insists–that’s not true? What if he’s done a lot of things Ruby doesn’t know about?
In essence, as the late Roger Ebert observed, Ruby becomes trapped inside of her own identity crisis. Who’s the unjustly imprisoned party? Should she push on with her crusade or move on? How much personal capital can Ruby spend before concluding she has made a bad investment? And there’s Brian….
This is a very well-acted film that was made on a shoestring budget. If, at times, it looks it, that’s because the entire project came in at $200,000 and was a wrap after just 19 days. To put that in perspective, most Hollywood studio films take at least 40 days to film, have budgets north of $35 million, and spend about $40,000 on catering alone. Need I list for you the ones whose food was more digestible than the movie? Middle of Nowhere is both a small jewel and a bargain by comparison. It’s available on DVD and various streaming platforms.
Rob Weir
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