Sword of Trust

I am a fool. And I have been a fool my whole life. As a child, I never watched The Neverending Story because I assumed it literally never ended. So what was the point? My tendency to take things literally followed me into adulthood. Until yesterday, I thought a key facet of the mumblecore genre was dialogue that is inarticulate or otherwise hard to make out. I was wrong! Sword of Trust is a mumblecore movie. And those performers had great diction! I perfectly understood all of their heavily improved character-based comedy. Time for me to reevaluate this whole genre. Thanks, Sword of Trust!

Sword of Trust is a comedy with four leads. The lesbian ones are Mary (Michaela Watkins) and Cynthia (Jillian Bell). Cynthia’s grandfather recently passed away. She and Mary go to collect her grandfather’s inheritance. Cynthia learns she is now the owner of a confederate sword from the Civil War. The other two leads are pawnshop owner, Mel (Marc Maron) and his employee, Nathaniel (Jon Bass). Cynthia and Mary encounter Mel and Nathaniel when they try and pawn the sword. The four agree to split the profits from trying to sell the sword to a fringe group who are looking for historical proof that the South won the Civil War.

what mumblecore actually means is an indie film that features naturalistic acting, a focus on dialogue and often, a degree of improvisation. Following these conventions, Sword of Trust is very character and dialogue-driven. And because I was wrong in my beliefs, all this dialogue is very cleanly captured and easy to make out. Great! The character and dialogue work here is really good. These four characters share certain sensibilities that allow them to exist within the same universe and weird plot. But there’s solid distinction and individuality for each as well. The plot of Sword of Trust is absurd. And as a concept, you could take it a lot further. But in finding with mumblecore, Sword of Trust instead decides to scale it down and use its weird premise as an exploration for its four leads and some good jokes along the way.

The improv in the film is pretty impressive. I didn’t know it was improv at the time, which is the best sign. I basically thought all the actors were really good at so-called naturalistic acting. One of the best scenes in the movie is a scene in which the four share a discussion in the back of a truck. This is also the film’s most lengthy piece of improv. All four actors are in top form here. They play off each other incredibly. This scene has some great jokes and excellent character development.

Sword of Trust really works because of how well everyone understands the universe and the movie that they’re in. This feels like more of a collaboration between filmmaker and actors than most scripted films. The stand-out among the main cast is Marc Maron. He was apparently newest to improvisational acting. But I couldn’t remotely tell. What his performance really showed was how much he’s on the same wavelength as writer/director and his real-life partner, Lynn Shelton. More than anyone, he inhabits this universe and this character. The other standout performance is Toby Huss. Huss plays a secondary character. His character and specific vocal pattern got the biggest laughs out of me.

Sword of Trust is a later and more polished entry into the subgenre of mumblecore. That might make it more accessible than those not familiar with the subgenre. But certainly, Sword of Trust won’t be for everyone because mumblecore isn’t for everyone. I expect some with be put off by the anti-climactic ending. What I learned watching Sword of Trust is that mumblecore is for me, though. I admire the focus on character work, quality improv and off-beat comedy. Sword of Trust opened up a whole new subgenre for me. Although to be fair, that’s less due to the film being so powerful and more because of the power of my ability to take things literally threw up a barrier that wasn’t actually there.

Overall rating: 6.8/10

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