River of Grass

There is a kneejerk tendency to decontextualize people’s lives. This can lead to rash uninformed judgments about some of the decisions they make. But it isn’t always apparent what folks are dealing with nor the level of support cradling them. When youth and limited social experience are layered in, it becomes even more difficult to appreciate the challenges they face. Derek Magyar’s short film, River of Grass, encourages us to critically consider the predicaments of young veterans and perhaps young people in general. 

Starring Dylan McTee of Roswell, Mexico fame, River of Grass presents 20-something year-old Larry Johnson, who arrives home in the Florida Everglades after serving in the Vietnam War. In reuniting with his family, Larry does not react to being called the usual nicknames, like “war hero” and “Golden Boy.” His older and hostile brother Robert, played by Victor Webster (Mystery on Mistletoe Lane, Workin’ Moms), teasingly but jealously tells him “You almost look like a man now.”

These labels convey the commonsense idea that Larry is tougher as a result of experiencing war. But this is a superficial assessment based on Larry’s physical fitness and the significance of his uniform. While he looks more fit and upright than when he left, surely, he has been shaken to his core in ways that are not readily apparent. 

As I wrote in the review of Lonesome Soldier, I suspect the stirrings beneath the surface are, at least in part, veterans’ efforts to reconcile who they are with what they’ve done and seen. Compounding this for Larry is a family whose business is crime, and their explicit and tacit expectations that he rejoin their underground enterprise. 

Although other options are available to Larry given his veterans benefits, his freedom to exercise them is constrained by his circumstance. As if the weight of the family business isn’t heavy enough to bear, Larry is limited by his mother Betsy’s sentiments (Marceline Hugot) that college “[feeds] kids that liberal hippie crap.” So, Larry’s freedom to do what is right for him is suppressed due to the pressures exerted by his family. Adding in his young age, his ability to freely decide what is right for him becomes even more difficult.

When we think of military veterans, we often imagine them as older adults, and the news largely portrays them as such. It is true that nearly three-fourths of military veterans are in this age group, but River of Grass has me wondering if younger veterans are being overlooked in the smaller but significant slice. In any case, responses to their predicaments cannot be simplistic, rectified with labels and platitudes to help them feel seen. There is a need to more fully appreciate the context of young veterans’ lives in order to understand how best to support them given their age and familial constraints. So, I am left wondering if the needs of younger veterans are perhaps more nuanced than those of their older counterparts, who have wider and deeper life experiences and are more likely to have families of their own providing unconditional comfort and affirming support.

A Vietnam War-era piece, River of Grass is a dark story in a southern rural setting, where streetlights and landscape lighting typically do not exist. The effect of this is the film’s ominous tone, reminiscent of the 1986 feature length movie At Close Range, with Sean Penn as Brad Jr. and Christopher Walken as his father, Brad Sr. The elder Brad heads a violent crime business in rural Pennsylvania and is eventually joined by his unsuspecting son. Like River of Grass, At Close Range is shot mostly in the dark, and the subject matter is seedy and ominous. Note that River of Grass contains language of the period that some might find offensive.