The below is a rerun of our interview from the 2014 Sundance Film Festival.
Part western, part science fiction, wholly original—it’s not easy to pin down — writer/director Jake Paltrow’s latest film, “Young Ones,” which premiered this week at the Sundance Film Festival (read our review here), is worth an examination.
Ernest Holm (a gaunt Michael Shannon) and his two teenage children, Jerome (Kodi Smit-McPhee) and Mary (Elle Fanning), are resolutely holding onto their farmland in a drought-ravaged near future, stubbornly believing that the water will soon return. (In a town that shares an odd optimism, “Pray for rain” is a common greeting.) Paltrow imbues this landscape—using South Africa as a stand-in for the anonymous American West—with futuristic touches, including both a robotic mule and medical advances that are keeping the family’s wife/mother (Aimee Mullins) alive. Not too far away, water flows freely in an overcrowded city, glimpses of which let us know the...
