The thing about integrity is that you can only verify it when it is tested. To go unchallenged, to not have any opportunity to know your worth, means no way of knowing whether you have character or you’re a coward. That is the tension behind The Integrity of Joseph Chambers, a film that puts its protagonist through a wringer of his own making. Director and writer Robert Machoian opts for the economical storytelling of short fiction writing, with few characters and only one major conflict, but includes just enough well-observed details that his film is never boring. In fact, it culminates in a kind of anti-masculine cautionary tale that firmly suggests that maybe, just maybe, it is best to stay in your lane.
Clayne Crawford plays Joseph “Joe” Chambers, an insurance man who lives in the suburbs with his wife Tess (Jordana Brewster) and their two children. The ease of domesticity does not sit well with Joe, who decides he must prove himself as a hunter. At first, the appearance of hunting culture interested him most. As the film starts, he and Tess argue over Joe’s new mustache, which she sees as a kind of cultural hijacking, except this morning Joe plans to set out early and catch a deer by himself. He borrows a pickup truck and rifle from his friend Doug (Carl Kennedy), then sets out on the property. Machoian opts for crisp, digital photography that suggests wintry forest as an indifferent place, one that would be just happy without an idiot like Joe making a scene through it.
You don’t need to be a hunter to be fairly certain Joe lacks the requisite patience and skill to be the kind who gets results. He runs around the wilderness, cluelessly calling attention to himself, and eventually goofs off to pass the time. It never occurs to him that even skilled hunters often return home without anything to show for their efforts. But then he sees a deer, and his attempt to kill it starts a chain of tragic events.
The film strikes an intriguing balance between sympathy and admonishment. Joe is not a tough sonofabitch, although he wants to be, perhaps because he was in a post-apocalyptic show like The Last of Us or maybe Man vs. Wild. There are multiple times where he observes he must be able to “care for his family,” suggesting he is a would-be survivalist or prepper who feels his vocation and lovely suburban home are not enough when civilization could evaporate at any moment. The ironically-named Machoian demonstrates, in one scene after another, that Joe does not have the right stuff. It is never clearer than at one point where Joe meets a stranger in the wilderness, one who has the exact lifestyle Joe envies, and who recognizes almost immediately that he’s a poseur. It is mordantly funny, with a kind of eye toward masculinity you might see from Hemingway, and the added title that creates a kind of ticking clock.
Joe does not test his integrity until after his encounter with the second man finally ends. While Crawford’s performance conveys an intriguing mix of self-deprecation and false bravado, the final passages are where the film clicks into a different register. Joe has to make some hard decisions, only to realize there is no decision to be made at all, another way of saying his integrity has made up his mind for him. This is not what he planned, but Joe at long last has his answer, and so do we.
The final scenes involve Joe talking to his friend, a police chief played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who brings credibility as a mild-mannered man that nonetheless understands when his patience is no longer useful. Between him and Brewster, both of whom have appeared in huge mainstream entertainments, Machoian has canny instincts in his ability to cast actors who can lean into archetypes and whose presence in a low-budget drama add immediate credibility.
Machoian is an intriguing filmmaker. Between this and his 2020 feature The Killing of Two Lovers, he prefers to make films on his own terms. His titles suggest a curiosity with genre, and indeed Integrity flirts with being a survival thriller, although instead he wants to drill into the heads of his characters, considering the internality of men who are not always given this kind of exacting attention. In fact, this film and Crawford’s performance resist an easy identification with the protagonist. By drilling into this particular man and his eccentricities, we can finally see the true cost of what it means when a man will do anything to avoid the cost of a licensed therapist.
Photo courtesy of Gravitas Ventures
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