“You’re not scared? I’m scared all the time.”
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| Photo credit: Never Steady, Never Still/IMDb |
“What for?”
“Getting left. Or leaving. Or not leaving.”
This exchange, from a late scene in writer-director Kathleen Hepburn’s feature film debut, Never Steady, Never Still, gets at a harsh truth about the vast majority of people in Western societies. Escaping from dead-end towns, jobs, and relationships isn’t always an option, no matter how many Bruce Springsteen songs you listen to while fantasizing about getting out. Sometimes you’re stuck.
This leaves you with a choice: You can turn inward and become resentful for your lot in life, or you can accept the breaks that life gives you. You don’t have to be happy when bad stuff happens. You don’t even have to be content. But finding a sort of peace is possible when you reach out to those in a position to give you emotional support. Few films in recent times have shown that as delicately or movingly as Never Steady, Never Still.
It’s something Judy (Shirley Henderson) has wrestled with for most of her adult life. Diagnosed with Parkinson’s in her 30s, she has fought the debilitating disorder for decades with her husband Ed (Nicholas Campbell) by her side at their home, nestled next to a lake in the Canadian countryside. They raised a son, Jamie (Théodore Pellerin), and are now sending him off into the world to work for an oil and gas company. They’ve done all right for themselves, all things considered.
Judy hunches, her vertebrae protruding from her skin as if they’re trying to escape. She can’t keep the tremors from wracking her body with pain and constant discomfort. Her voice warbles as she struggles to get the words out. Her mind is occasionally cloudy—much cloudier than a woman in her 50s typically is or should be. It’s not fair and she knows it. And she feels guilt for what she thinks she’s put her family through.
Of course, she didn’t choose any of this. Nobody gets sick on purpose. But she blames herself anyway, worried that she has wasted her husband’s life, as he has spent every day of every year helping her to button her pants, to raise their quiet and stubborn and aimless son, and to keep their home functioning even when the wintry Canadian winds threaten to freeze the pipes into uselessness. It’s hard work being committed. Because of her disease and whatever other self-esteem issues she may have had long before her sickness, she doesn’t believe that she’s worth it. Until, that is, a woman at her weekly rehab and exercise group reassures her.
“That’s just marriage, shakes or not,” says the woman, who is many years Judy’s senior and yet still in better shape due to a much later diagnosis. And with that, Hepburn’s humanistic approach to filmmaking begins to truly enrapture.
Hepburn’s characters are ordinary people with struggles of all stripes—interpersonal, financial (Judy’s pills aren’t cheap even with the Canadian health-care system), and physical. But they’re also radically kind in how they treat each other. They are almost unrelenting in their self-criticism, but when presented with the faults of others, they treat those people with acceptance no matter what.
And that “no matter what” can be enormous, relationship-destroying stuff. These are the kinds of things that would in other movies be the start of actorly shouting matches, the scenes you recognize because they appear during the “best actor” and “best actress” montages every year at the Oscars. But no, Hepburn and her performers pursue a more understated goal: repose.
With a camera prone to catching every ounce of pain that encroaches Judy’s body and Jamie’s unsure mind and Ed’s do-what-you-gotta-do exhaustion, you might expect Never Steady, Never Still to be a slog through misery. But Norm Li’s cinematography never forgets the things that can soothe, like a rickety old windmill spinning lazily or the sun bouncing off the surface of a frozen lake that has been freshly kissed by snow. It’s a punishing place, this world, but it’s also a place that rewards you with comfort from time to time.
For Judy, that comfort is needed. The same goes for Jamie and Ed. For a brief moment, it’s enough. And that’s all you can ask.
Director: Kathleen Hepburn
Writer: Kathleen Hepburn
Starring: Shirley Henderson, Théodore Pellerin, Mary Galloway, Nicholas Campbell
Rating: 4/5 stars
Note: This film screened at the Chicago International Film Festival and will be available in limited release and probably streaming platforms in the coming months.
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