Festival favourite Lynn Shelton returns to SXSW with her new drama/comedy, Sword of Trust. Premiering opening night, the film follows couple Mary (Michaela Watkins) and Cynthia (Jillian Bell) who return to the family home to collect the latter’s inheritance from the latter’s recently deceased grandfather.
So not sure what to expect, they meet with the family lawyer who presents just one item, a sword. But not just any old sword, Cynthia’s grandfather claimed it proves that the South won the Civil War.
Hoping to sell the sword for a quick buck, the couple team up with local pawn shop owner (Marc Maron) and his lacklustre assistant (Jon Bass). The foursome agree the split the profits, and a few internet rabbit holes later, find a potential buyer who is very interested in sword’s “unique backstory”, though it’s a world they quickly regret stepping into.
Shot in a remarkable 12 days from just a scriptment by Shelton and Mike O’Brien, the dialogue is largely improvised as the meandering film both lives by, and dies by, the sword (no pun intended).
Where it works, and the snappy cast are let loose in a scene to fantastic effect, the film raises more than a few laughs and really entertains in scenes of relative isolation. But it struggles to maintain a strong sense of narrative in between, feeling quite loose and baggy where the audience sometimes needed to be swept along from point to point.
Much of the film is watching the foursome talking, scheming, bickering. And while I could watch the excellent cast for hours as they go back and forth (Jon Bass is particularly excellent), for a narrative film, they lack that extra depth, a second side of the film alongside the relative farce of the sword. It didn’t need to be anything earth shattering, just somewhere else to go too.
Nevertheless this is a subject area ripe for play, and while Sword of Truth is hardly a take-down of conspiracy theorists and revisionist history, it pokes fun as those elements of society with excellent effect. And there’s no doubt you’re rooting for the ragtag foursome when they find themselves in a little too deep with some particularly bizarre characters.
Sword of Truth is not a total success, but it’s cer tainly not a failure either. And when you consider the remarkable production timeline, Shelton deserves great credit for pulling together such entertaining, if slightly leggy, farce.