Loggerheads **** (2005, Bonnie Hunt, Tess Harper, Michael Kelly, Chris Sarandon, Kip Pardue, Michael Learned) – Classic Movie Review 12,895

Tim Kirkman’s 2005 film Loggerheads is a haunting, beguiling labour of love. Bonnie Hunt, Tess Harper, Michael Kelly and Kip Pardue star in three overlapping stories of estranged families in three areas of North Carolina.

‘One son. Two mothers. Three endangered lives.’

Co-writer/ director Tim Kirkman’s 2005 independent film Loggerheads is a sweet, charming, haunting, quite beguiling labour of love. It is special. The film stars Bonnie Hunt, Tess Harper, Michael Kelly, Chris Sarandon, Kip Pardue and Michael Learned. It is written by Caitlin Dixon and Tim Kirkman, and produced by Gill Holland. It premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2005, and was released in the US by Strand Releasing on 14 October 2005.

Loggerheads is an authentic feeling, beautiful film, maybe a little too sentimental, nostalgic and laid-back but even so in a very good way, and it still has an edge as it deals with important topics intelligently, dramatically and thought-provokingly. Talking nostalgia, the America on show hardly seems real, but then there it is up on screen.

Loggerheads is all about mothers and sons, estrangement, acceptance, adoption, oh and religion. Bonnie Hunt and Tess Harper give most appealing performances as mothers who made the wrong choices in the past and have to face up to them in the present, while Kip Pardue and Michael Kelly are quiet heartstoppers as young gay men who meet on the beach. Chris Sarandon is good too as Tess Harper’s conservative minister husband, and Michael Learned is notable as Bonnie Hunt’s uptight mother Sheridan Bellamy.

The actors pull you into the drama, but even so the main credit must go to Tim Kirkman though for all the thought and care he has put into the writing and direction.

The film confidently interweaves three separate, related stories unfolding in different parts of North Carolina. On Mother’s Day 1999, Mark (Kip Pardue), a gay young drifter fascinated by endangered loggerhead turtles, begins a relationship with kind-hearted gay motel handyman George (Michael Kelly). On Mother’s Day 2000, Mark’s adoptive mother Elizabeth (Tess Harper) wonders what has happened to her estranged son. Eventually she asks her neighbour. The news isn’t good. On Mother’s Day 2001, Mark’s birth mother Grace (Bonnie Hunt) quits her job and searches for the son she gave up years before. All these people are essentially nice. Loggerheads has a surprisingly positive view of humankind, though it takes in the idea that life deals a lot of hard blows.

Inspired by true events but with names changed, Loggerheads has an unusual, tricky to make work, complex structure as it tells the story of an adoption set of three related people — birth mother, son and adoptive parents — in three interwoven stories in the days leading up to different Mother’s Days, each in one of three regions of North Carolina: the Appalachian Mountains, the hilly plateau of Piedmont and the Atlantic Coastal Plain.

In mountainous Asheville, Grace Bellamy (Bonnie Hunt), an airport car-rental agent living with her withholding mother Sheridan Bellamy (Michael Learned), quits her job and embarks on a long-delayed quest: challenging the legal barriers that keep her from finding the son she gave up for adoption when she was a teenager.

Across the state in Kure Beach, Mark (Kip Pardue), a young gay beach bum obsessed with saving loggerhead sea turtles, meets George (Michael Kelly), a friendly and kindly gay motel worker, who offers him a room to stay in the motel to save him from getting arrested for vagrancy. Centre state is the small town of Eden, where troubled minister’s wife Elizabeth (Tess Harper) struggles with her conservative minister husband Robert (Chris Sarandon) over their estrangement from their son. Robert doesn’t wants gays in his church apparently, or as neighbours.

Irish singer-songwriter and composer Mark Geary writes the score and two songs for the film. The music of singer-songwriter Patty Griffin is also featured. The music is a very significant part of the mood and emotional force of the film, keeping forceful but not too manipulative. sonaBLAST! Records released the soundtrack.

Loggerheads was filmed on location mainly in Wilmington, North Carolina, in May 2004. It was made for only $500,000 (estimated) and they have got marvellous value for their money. And so have we.

After its premiere at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival, where it was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize, Loggerheads screened at festivals in the US and worldwide. It won the Audience Award at the Nashville Film Festival and the Florida Film Festival, and took the top prize at Outfest, the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Film Festival.

Each of the three overlapping stories is filmed in its own colour palette: Eden in red, Asheville in green, and Kure in blue.

Tim Kirkman appears as Paul in the photo of Paul and George.

The bedroom scene with Tess Harper and Chris Sarandon was shot on location in a room too small for a film crew, so it had to be filmed from the hallway using the reflection of the wall mirror.

Directed by Tim Kirkman.

Written by Caitlin Dixon and Tim Kirkman.

Produced by Gill Holland.

The film stars Bonnie Hunt, Tess Harper, Michael Kelly, Chris Sarandon, Kip Pardue and Michael Learned, along with Robin Weigert, Ann Owens Pierce, Valerie Watkins, Trevor Gagnon, Kelly Mizell, Craig Walker, Michael Esper and Joanne Pankow.

Tim Kirkman went on the make the 2016 film Lazy Eye.

© Derek Winnert 2024 – Classic Movie Review 12,895

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