The gut-wrenching, unflinching James White, the inaugural film by Josh Mond, brazenly pulls onto your jacket’s lapels with a sharp array of tight closeup shots and equally closeup feelings. In actor Christopher Abbott, Mond (producer of the excellent Martha Marcy May Marlene) has found a wonder of nature. They provide a character that utterly sticks to your craw. And if Abbott’s perplexed, iconoclastic, yet devoted James White isn’t enough for you, there’s Cynthia Nixon, in one of the year’s best performances, playing his mom, who just happens to be riddled with cancer.
About as far away from a Disease of the Week movie as can be, James White taunts you to dare offer any objections to its in-your-face, yet strangely subtle, style. Just when you think James is a shit, he comes up big, and just when he comes up big, he slides a little back into being a shit, but not all the way back, and that’s crucial. In the film’s opening scenes, he’s the last guy you would think has a shot at redemption.
Barely showing up for his estranged Dad’s shiva after an all-nighter, White promptly throws everybody out of the apartment. In another low, he shows up at a potentially important job interview disheveled and unprepared. When he’s not starting bar fights and the like, however, he’s rising up to providing his mom with deeply felt caregiving. If you insist on keeping your holiday moviegoing to the bright and sunny, you don’t know what you’re missing. Mond, who based this movie on his personal experiences, has crafted a fierce and devastating portrait of the dynamic between grief and personal growth. Its tender catharsis lingers longs after viewing.