The Overnighters
Directed by: Jesse Moss
Written by: Jesse Moss
Documentary/Drama - 102 Minutes Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 9 Nov 2014
Written by: Jesse Moss
Documentary/Drama - 102 Minutes Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 9 Nov 2014
The Overnighters aims for impact on both the micro and macro levels. On one hand, it is about one local pastor’s crusade to help his fellow man. On a larger scale, it chronicles the broader industrial and sociological phenomena of the sizeable population migration to out of the way North Dakota of folks in search of employment and all the issues and new problems they bring with them to an area comfortable in its isolation. Why must the newcomers conform to the straight-laced ways of the town folk asks one job seeker? Jesus didn’t conform. Pastor Jay Reinke answers in a serious tone, “Jesus didn’t have our neighbors.”
Williston, North Dakota has the aura of most boomtowns. People arrive by the dozens having been told they will have a job right when they step off the bus. Skills? Doesn’t matter. Sketchy felonious past? Nobody’s asking. Reality is quite different. Yes, there are jobs, but this is the oil and advanced fracking industry. Skills and work ethic are most definitely required.
Williston, North Dakota has the aura of most boomtowns. People arrive by the dozens having been told they will have a job right when they step off the bus. Skills? Doesn’t matter. Sketchy felonious past? Nobody’s asking. Reality is quite different. Yes, there are jobs, but this is the oil and advanced fracking industry. Skills and work ethic are most definitely required.
The new arrivals dreaming of six figures and a second chance are not the boom’s leading edge; they missed that by a few years. They are merely the latest wave to enter a now saturated job market. So what do they do now that the bus has pulled away and they have no job? They go se Pastor Reinke down at the Concordia Lutheran Church.
Williston residents enjoy the benefits of their economic boom yet must confront the side effects: inflation, a rise in crime with a rising population, and determining the line where their Christian charity ends and their insular, self-protective instincts take over. Fortune seekers and desperate men looking for a new beginning in the 19th century boomtowns of old did not have to deal with background checks.
Director Jesse Moss follows the men who left their old lives to follow the good news flowing out of Williston. Young guys in the early-‘20s with just a high school diploma under their belts run from rural Midwest and southern locales with zero employment opportunities. Middle-aged journeymen run from drug problems, ex-wives, and even sex offender stigmas. Pastor Reinke accepts all of them, even the sex offenders as long as they stay under the radar. The scenes between Pastor Reinke and the overnighters filmed by Moss are frequently intimate. Tears roll down cheeks, promises are made, and more often than not, promises are broken.
Moss provides The Overnighters with a steady pace and intriguing atmosphere up until the final act. The pastor’s off screen life comes out of nowhere, throws a wrench in the tempo, and introduces a foreign and vague situation the audience was not set up for. Yes, Moss had to include it, but he does not fit it in seamlessly. The concluding events are a glaring and out of place coda. Rather than wrapping up with our main characters either hopeful for the future or dreading the obstacles to come, Moss ends on an unsettling and abrupt situation with no closure. It is a shame such a jagged ending must conclude what was an absorbing and thoughtful study on one of the 21st centuries odder shifts.
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