Jason Reitman’s LABOR DAY Avoids Being The Nicholas Sparks Movie It Could Have Been
A few weeks ago, I was at a screening of Young Adult with Jason Reitman in attendance. In the post-show QA, Reitman commented that the trailer for his then upcoming film Labor Day with Rhianna’s “Stay” playing on it made it look like a Nicholas Sparks adaptation. That was Reitman’s way of saying the film isn’t the same as a Sparks movie, but he’s only half right.
Labor Day very well could have played out like any of the countless Sparks adaptations we’ve endured over the last few years. Its premise, a single mom and her son taken hostage by and then developing a family-like bond with an escaped convict over the long end-of-summer weekend, certainly makes it seem like it could be.
Not with Reitman at the helm, though. Instead this motion picture plays out like a thriller, with the lusty romance used as the jumping off point for what is quite possibly Reitman’s most well-crafted film to date. While the film’s rapid third act crescendo exposes the source material for what it is, you can’t deny that the preceding moments are as good as anything you’ll see in the cinema this or any other year.
In Labor Day, Kate Winslet stars as the anxious, agoraphobic mother Adele, who relies on her son Henry (Gattlin Griffith) for companionship in her life. But young Henry, just entering seventh grade, is discovering that he can be everything his mother needs. On their monthly shopping trip to the Pricemart, Henry runs into a limping, wounded man named Frank (Josh Brolin) who invites himself to ride home with Adele and her son.
Upon arriving at Adele’s home, Frank quickly admits that he’s an escaped convict, a murderer, but assures them that he’s not there to harm them. And he doesn’t. Instead, over the Labor Day weekend he becomes the man of the house, fixing loose steps and changing the oil in Adele’s car. He plays catch with Henry, something that the father who stepped out on Adele, must never have done. Soon Adele, who hasn’t been with a man since Henry’s father left, let’s her longing get the better of her, and she falls for Frank.
Of course, Frank and Adele’s relationship is in peril from the get go. And that’s really where the film excels. Because with a plot like the one I describe above, Labor Day shouldn’t be any good. But with a director like Reitman, that peril becomes the film’s driving force.
Reitman, who also wrote the screenplay for this Joyce Maynard adaptation, has a way of taking his stories in a direction that we’re not expecting. Here, however, he takes the filmmaking itself in a direction that a less interesting filmmaker wouldn’t have dared. In the moments that could lead to Frank’s capture, the film fills with the intense beats of Hitchcockian thriller. When the moments pass, there’s a sweet relief that allows us to buy into the film’s more conventional romantic notions.
Romantic conventions only go so far, though and Reitman knows it. He limits our exposure to them, but that too makes the romantic moments all the better. One scene in particular, where Adele, Henry and Frank make a peach pie together, is a singular moment in the film that establishes the budding relationship as the real deal, and makes the inevitable separation much more tragic.
All of those moments have an acknowledgement of the falsehood of the romance genre itself, though. Reitman’s smart enough to know there’s bullshit in it, but he’s not dumb enough to outright satirize. It’s a fine tight-rope walk… up until the film’s last act. In the final minutes of the film, the weight of the silly story collapses on itself, and Labor Day becomes the Nicholas Sparks adaptation we expected all along.
Still, that ending doesn’t blemish the one-hour and forty-five minutes that precede it. Reitman performs a miracle and it shows. With a talented creative team on his side and two actors who are great in just about anything, Reitman’s Labor Day avoids being the sappy, depressing Nick Cassavetes-style adaptation you’d expect. That alone makes the film worth your time.
Labor Day, starring Kate Winslet and Josh Brolin and directed by Jason Reitman from his screenplay, is now playing.
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