Broken, desperate men chase their dreams and run from their demons in the North Dakota oil fields. A local Pastor risks everything to help them.
Moss allows the natural facets of this story to shine through, creating a gem of a documentary that's raw, honest and brutally relevant.
A painful and poignant excoriation of the American dream.
Patient, non-judgemental docu-making yields psychologically rich results in Jesse Moss’s potent dispatch from recession-hit America.
Brisk, well-structured and compelling, but oddly cold.
Moss has put the documentary together in painstaking fashion, somehow managing to be there, filming discreetly, at all the most intimate and climactic moments.
From a religious point of view, it is a story about one man’s state of grace; from a secular perspective, it is about politics and society. It is a very powerful, contemporary study.
A tough, unvarnished film with a universal resonance and one that leaves you with lots to ponder.
The result is arguably intrusive, with the film getting closest to its subject when all his defences are down, but it makes for acute portraiture – and for a sobering depiction of an America in crisis that looks shockingly close to the desperation of the 1930s.
General release. Check local listings for show times.
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