A Pan’s Labyrinth for flyover country, American Fable crosses horror-tinged fantasy with a coming-of-age fairy tale firmly rooted in the unique virtues of the American Midwest, the oft-overlooked region with a chip on its shoulder large enough to fill its wide expanses of sprawling farmland. It feels appropriate, then, that the opening sequence features vast green fields, waves of golden wheat, and a small figure cutting across the landscape, a pastoral setting that recalls painter Andrew Wyeth’s regional realism. A pretty picture indeed, but the true nature of the Midwest lies with its people. We’re shown that aspect in the second scene, when a father lectures his daughter about Midwestern glory, even though it’s clear—from the gravel in his voice to the way he regurgitates naïve local talk radio—that he’s mostly appeasing himself. A sense of dread, compounded by fear, pulses beneath the pristine surface.
Director Anne Hamilton sets the film during the farm crisis of the early 1980s and derives considerable tension from the hopelessness felt by those most burdened. The story centers on 11-year-old Gitty (Peyton Kennedy) and her struggling Wisconsin family, including farm-owning parents Sarah and Abe (Marci Miller and Kip Pardue) and older brother Martin (Gavin MacIntosh), whose teasing ways sometimes cross the line into brutal tormenting. Confused by her parents’ anger and anxiety and wary of her weird brother, the lonely Gitty finds solace in fables and fantasy. One day, she’s fascinated to discover a big-talking city slicker named Jonathan (Richard Schiff) imprisoned in a remote silo on the edge her parents’ property. His presence scares her as much as it intrigues her, and their interactions seem to trigger a string of strange and frightening occurrences.
Early on, American Fable somewhat resembles the 2012 David Zellner film Kid-Thing, which followed the misadventures of a lonesome and potentially disturbed young girl who discovers a vulnerable adult deep in the wilderness. Hamilton is slow to reveal the extent of Gitty’s imaginative ways, and she seems to suggest that Jonathan could perhaps exist solely in her mind, similar to the the way Zellner casts doubt on the realism in his film. Eventually, however, the nature of American Fable opens up as two mysterious figures begin frequenting the farmland: a horned, black-clad figure roaming about on horseback and a Mephistophelean woman named Vera (Zuleikha Robinson), the latter of whom appears to have something to do with Jonathan’s imprisonment. Hamilton leverages these characters in an attempt to explore the symbolic and mythological, resulting in sequences that are visually satisfying but painfully literal. (A lengthy montage set to a reading of W.B. Yeats’ “The Second Coming” is one such example.)
Hamilton displays a number of strengths that belie her rookie status. Following Guillermo del Toro’s approach in Pan’s Labyrinth, she filters the action through a child’s point of view, allowing the character’s innocence and gullibility to inform things like camera placement and shot selection; scenes that find her peering through keyholes and around dark corners, observing situations and behaviors she doesn’t fully comprehend, carry unique beauty and hushed dread. Midwestern vistas, not usually know for their topographical grandeur or diversity, are shot with an eye for transformation. Crucial nighttime scenes, which look like they were filmed in some sort of alien jungle as opposed to a nondescript farmland, play with the notion of the “American heartland.”
Stylistic confidence aside, Hamilton doesn’t seem to trust her actors. Kennedy carries herself well enough and is fairly impressive given her age, but the supporting players tend to chew the scenery, particularly those with more extraneous roles and subplots, like the bewildering and ultimately useless retired police officer played Rusty Schwimmer. Perhaps they overcompensated, compelled by the conviction Hamilton clearly has for her material. The narrative, despite becoming increasingly tedious as it focuses more on the particulars of the plot and less on the nuances of Gitty’s perspective, nevertheless coaxes a phantasmagoric fable out of a very real crisis. As farms around the country buckled under economic duress and Midwestern families saw their livelihoods crumble before them, the “Morning in America” described by Ronald Reagan began to feel like a fantasy. In American Fable, Hamilton shows us how the fantasy was closer to a nightmare.
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