There’s a certain charm to what first-time feature film director John Slattery (Mad Men‘s Roger Sterling) brings to this darkly comical inner-city drama, God’s Pocket. Adapted from the novel of the same name, the film tells the story of the fragmented Scarpato couple losing their son Leon (Caleb Landry Jones) in a construction “accident.” Though it features a truly all-star acting class, bringing veteran performances to try and really wrangle that specific tone down, the story manages to feel consistently untamed, and unsure of what it wants to leave its audiences with.
“God’s Pocket” refers to the imaginary New York suburban city of which all the residents are like family- more specifically, like your equal parts overly-loving yet just as volatile family members whose unquestioned love stems from the years of shared familial history surviving in the Pocket. Slattery here gets to choose all of the tools and colors to paint the picture of what one off-the-wall life event might be like in this unkempt hole of a neighborhood, along with imagining all of the players to breathe life into the story.
The dry hi-jinks and bonkers provide the humor that, lensed through this serious subject matter, give the film its black comedy packaging.
God’s Pocket features an incredible group of veteran film actors, giving the film a boost in prestige and intrigue right off the bat, and whose collective talents and work give end to being the film’s biggest draw. Manning the wheel of this readily-stocked indie, and whose involvement may end up being, in the not too distant future, the film’s most memorable trivia that audiences and film buffs remember as being “one of his last performances,” is the late, great, Philip Seymour Hoffman, in a wholly reined in role as the gambler/drunk step-father of Leon, Mickey Scarpato. Christina Hendricks, Slattery’s cable-TV buddy, assumes the role of dutiful home keeper and loving mother Jeanie Scarpato, whose breathy character gives the actress a fine role to play.
Also along for the ride are the incredible Richard Jenkins, having his own fun as a drunken newspaper writer Richard Shellburn, whose arrival and coverage of the death in the Pocket stirs the pot even further. Throw in some side supporting characters with a penchant for illegal activities and gambling, like John Turturro‘s Arthur ‘Bird’ Capezio, and you get a flavorful smattering of a day in the life of this tale of people, through self-induced problems and high-jinks fashion, continue to just carry on.
The dry hi-jinks and bonkers provide the humor that, lensed through the serious subject matter, give the film its black comedy packaging. Though these moments here stem from honest storytelling, like when Leon’s funeral money makes its way to being gambled, or when his body is transported by way of a meat packing car, there is still a confused tone to how we the audience feel we should internalize them. Are they comic moments in the tragedy that is this dark opera of lower-class American life? Or is the story a humorous account of life’s most bizarre happenings, rooted in classic familial woes? It’s in these muddled curiosities that leave the film hanging in the balance- perhaps not perfect, but still loved and accepted by the faithful community that makes it up.
