St. Nick strikes me as a kind of folk movie, in that it draws from its own self, and seems faithful to itself above all. Like, it sings a song of its own soul, with the voice of cinema.
The narrative evokes thoughts and feelings about self-searching and urgent discovery, and the speed of the movie is true to its characters, children (who are gifted with a mostly clockless existence), and its settings of fields and rundown homes and other outskirts of civilization.
It's sort of off the grid, minding its own, and unhurried by unseen troubles.
Is it a children's movie? In every wonderful way: its content is child friendly, its main characters are children, and most important to me, I felt like a child when I watched the movie. It has the sensitivity of a child and somehow -- a product of its art -- the movie vibrated with mystery and wonder, like the world does for a child.
The movie is fluent in the language of cinema.
David Lowery (writer/director/editor) and dp Clay Liford demonstrate such good taste that was I reminded of the classic Hawks quotes about "three great scenes, no bad ones" and that a good director is "someone who doesn't annoy you."
St. Nick is a warm and lyrical movie that's essentially faultless.
A thing that's difficult to demonstrate in this format is Lowery's skill for cinematic grammar. The narrative is essentially a wallless series of drifting vignettes. Events occur late in the movie to help provide an overall context, but the bulk of the structure exists inter-sequence, emotion to emotion.
Cinema, from the inside out.
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