“The whole United States… ain’t big enough. There ain’t room enough for you an’ me, for your kind an’ my kind, for rich and poor together all in one country, for thieves and honest men. For hunger and fat.”
—The Grapes of Wrath
This is no dust bowl. But a cavalcade of men and families descending on a town in slim hopes of a job, sleeping rough and worrying about their next meal sounds a lot like Steinbeck to me.
Jesse Moss’s documentary The Overnighters follows a fracking boom in a small North Dakota town, where tens of thousands of unemployed, almost exclusively men from across the country have been pouring in, lured by the “boatloads” of jobs promised by news articles, and by friends bragging about six-figure paycheques and $30-an-hour McDonald’s earnings. Many have borrowed money or used up savings to get there, only to find that there are too few jobs and too many applicants.
Worse still, the town of Williston was unprepared for the flood of new arrivals. There’s little infrastructure to house the men who do find work, never mind the men who don’t. House prices have more than tripled.
Taking up the cause of the migrants is Jay Reinke, pastor of Williston’s Lutheran church. He has turned the church into a shelter at night, and the parking lot into a dormitory of men living and sleeping in their cars, waiting for sanctuary.
The “Overnighters” program is dividing the congregation and the community. Members of the church dislike the mess and the smell of men sleeping on the church pews and on the floor.
Neighbours voice concerns about so many single, idle men living in one place, near their homes and their children. Many have criminal records; there are sex offenders, too. Christian charity can only extend so far.
But Pastor Reinke can’t do enough. He invites a sex offender into his home, where he lives with his wife and school-aged children. The paper gets wind of it and things really begin to unravel for Reinke, professionally and personally.
It’s fascinating how the film funnels in focus from the wider issue faced by the town, to the political fights and deceits within the church community, and finally settling on a very personal revelation at the film’s end. Director Moss was given unfettered access to Reinke’s life and obviously built up a great deal of trust; a megastore snack bar confession by the pastor to his wife, however, hints that the filmmaker may have crossed the line.
Winner of the Special Jury Prize for Intuitive Filmmaking at Sundance film festival, The Overnighters shines a light on the underside of capitalism and prosperity in America, all the while debating the possibility of redemption and reinvention after the wellspring of “love thy neighbour” runs dry.
The Overnighters screens Dec. 12, 13 and 17 at Vancity Theatre.
