LANDSLIDE

A fisherman’s accident in Canada threatens to sink the already tenuous lifelines his wife and teenage sons are holding onto in Maine.

Between global warming and decreasing quotas, Kit Archer is well aware that he might see fishing disappear in his lifetime. Yet, given that the occupation is the only thing he has ever known, he chases catches off Georges Bank. Unfortunately, an accident leaves him hospitalized in Nova Scotia while his wife, Jill, is left to attend to their sons, Charlie and Sam. A documentary filmmaker, Jill has to navigate the minefields of parenting teens while keeping her worries about her husband at bay and trying to endure the encroaching winter on an island off Sewall, Maine. It is no coincidence that Jill refers to 16-year-old Sam and 17-year-old Charlie as wolves: Their inscrutable silences might well qualify them as a different species altogether. The teen years are difficult enough, but Sam is also plagued by survivor’s guilt: Two years ago, he watched his best friend drown. Conley is at her best when chronicling the very real forces Jill balances while walking a fine line between empathizing with and laying down boundaries for her children. The rather pat ending does a disservice to the nuance with which the narrative portrays Jill’s simmering resentment at her husband’s apparent infidelity and her self-perception as an outsider. Jill might come from the same class as Kit, but she grew up in Harwich, a mill town: “It had more to do with fishing, which was its own status in Maine and wasn’t about class but something bigger, tied to the past and the ocean and survival.”

A compelling portrait of a family trying to stay afloat and weather every storm life throws at them.