Mid-June, 2012, had Shelburne Falls and much of the rest of Franklin County all a-gawk as the film crew for Labor Day came to town. For several days, the village of Shelburne Falls became “Holton Mills, New Hampshire,” with principal filming in or in front of many local businesses: Rethreads, Keystone Market, Baker Pharmacy, and the Greenfield Savings Bank, among others. Friday, June 15, was a particularly exciting day as an enormous crane photographed young Gatlin Griffith (Henry) cycling across the Iron Bridge.
Shooting also occurred in parts of Turners Falls, Millers Falls, Greenfield, and Belchertown. Western Massachusetts seems to have enchanted director Jason Reitman, who called its combination of landscape and architecture “like…in a dream.” (The Recorder, 9/2/12)
Turners Falls High School film teacher Jonathan Chappell landed a summer job with the film’s “locations department,” which involved scouting and selecting locations, managing them during shooting, and making the necessary arrangements with town boards and property owners. Since Labor Day was shot digitally, Chappell, who teaches digital filmmaking, was able to observe his craft applied in a big-budget production
Folks from Western Mass watching the film will note that Shelburne Falls flies by pretty quickly and many of the landscapes don’t really resemble their part of the state. That’s because much of the film, including Adele’s house, where most of the action takes place, was shot in eastern Massachusetts: Acton, Mansfield, Natick, Medfield, and Medway. (The house is in Acton.) The production company headquartered itself in Natick, and, logistically, it made [dollars and] sense to film close to Natick where possible.
Unfortunately, the finished film is a bit of a dud. Jason Reitman, so adept at directing zinging dialogue between gifted teens in Juno, is at a loss directing passion as observed by a mostly mute pre-teen. (Anyone would be, but for this Reitman, who wrote the script, has only himself to blame.) The film’s unlikely premise, a love-starved woman harboring and falling for a fugitive, isn’t new (think the farm episode in Grand Illusion or Heinrich Böll’s Lost Honor of Katharina Blum, adapted to film by Volker Schlöndorff). But to convince us to suspend disbelief, the hunger and the passion have to be visceral, and Labor Day throws in too many complications to succeed in this department. The revelation near the end of Adele’s miscarriages, for example, helps us understand why she seems more catatonic than simply love-starved, but that story element, along with son Henry’s ubiquity, inhibits rather than enhances the passion.
The narrative’s back story is told mainly through unannounced flashbacks, which are unnecessarily confusing. Considered daring in the 1960’s, such flashbacks have increased in sophistication over the years and often add a touch of mystery, inviting audiences to unravel their meaning, but poor casting choices make those in Labor Day hard to follow, even for inveterate film-goers.
If the flatness of the story-telling, which picks up somewhat as the couple attempts to put their doomed flight to Canada in motion, hasn’t spoiled the film sufficiently, the ham-handed ending certainly does. Ratcheting through twenty plus years in less than ten minutes, two more incarnations of Henry and a nod to the lasting influence of the memorable Labor Day weekend on him—he excels at making peach pie—we finally arrive at a happy ending; but it’s too little too late—for us and, we suspect, the characters—despite the narrator’s assurance to the contrary.
For a few days, Labor Day sprinkled pixie dust on Western Massachusetts. Unfortunately, the magic didn’t extend to the big screen. Perhaps the project was too far-flung for Reitman’s talent or, perhaps, his budget. Since 2012, several other productions have shot in Shelburne Falls. Maybe one of these will immortalize the village in film history. Meanwhile, the stars, the excitement, and the recognition will have to suffice.