The scene makes for one of the more astonishing moments in Jesse Moss’ potent documentary
Pastor Jay Reinke is being followed by a writer for the Williston Herald. Slight but dogged, the reporter asks the Concordia Lutheran Church minister if he was aware that some of the men housed at his church or living out of cars parked in the church lot have troubling criminal records.
Reinke doesn’t answer the reporter’s repeated query. He doesn’t say a word. He walks. He walks faster. Then he runs. All the while Moss’ camera trails the pair’s bizarre encounter.
Jobs have led thousands of men to descend on the town. They’d heard word of six-figure opportunities in the oil patch of North Dakota. Due to a dramatic shortage in housing and hotel rooms, many of them camp out in their cars or RVs.
For Moss, the migration recalled other striking American transits: rushes toward ore, flights from dust. And in 2012 the documentary filmmaker took his one-man production to Williston, documenting the migrants but even more the deeply compelling Reinke on and off for 18 months.
The movie’s title comes from the program Reinke initiated at his church to provide temporary housing for the influx of job-seekers.
“The Overnighters” has introduced us to a kind-spoken, thoughtful, hug-dispensing minister who engages people with a feel for one-on-one connection. A man walking the walk. Embracing adversity. Definitely not bolting from it. So his interaction with the reporter feels out of character.
But then, “The Overnighters” is remarkable for capturing again and again powerful contradictions. It explores an economic moment but also offers a portrait of spiritual commitment and struggle. It raises questions that need consideration as much in boom-times as in bust crises. Not least because they are so often interlocked.
“Not only are these men my neighbor,” the gray-haired, impassioned preacher says. “The people that don’t want them here are also my neighbor.”
Reinke makes a number of decisions that place burdens on his family and his church members. Wife Andrea and their three kids still living at home more than rise to the challenges. Their support underscores just how vital a minister’s family is to the pastoral undertaking.
Reinke’s thoughtful about community building but perhaps not always deft at the building itself. His congregation’s and neighbors’ concerns aren’t simply unfounded, NIMBY nonsense.
A Parachute, Colo., man was sentenced earlier this week to 80 years for his part in the , a school teacher who’d gone out for a run in nearby Sidney, Mont.
That’s an aberration, of course. More often the men are like dispirited electrician Mike Batten from Georgia and 20-something Keegan Edwards of Wisconsin, men who left families behind, hoping to partake in the rumored energy bonanza. They are hard-working but arrive unprepared for the resistance they encounter.
Although hydraulic fracturing is at the heart of the dramatic change on the Northern Plains, “The Overnighters” isn’t an eco-doc. Yes, one gets the sense of environmental frustration from church member Shelly Schultz in a meeting with the pastor.
“These people have no intention of building anything here. They rape, pillage and burn. And then they leave,” she tells Reinke. ” It’s heart-breaking to me to see my plains, my prairies destroyed, the wildlife destroyed, the water destroyed.” But this is one of the few mentions of fracking’s downside.
Instead, Moss uses images of drill towers or blistering flame as visual metaphors for other things transpiring on screen: the fracturing of a family, the heated fury that comes with a sense of betrayal.
Because over time, there are rifts. Not just with his congregants. New Yorker Paul Engel is particularly resentful. Reinke gave the man a bed in his home then asked him to move out to make room for Keith Graves, a truck driver whose presence proves decisive in this tale of Christian compassion and communal suspicion.
“The Overnighters” begins with a beautiful image of Reinke sitting in a doorway of an abandoned building. He is ruminating about the tension between public and private selves. The anguish contained in this soliloquy will take on force as the “The Overnighters” nears its end with a startling pivot.
Lisa Kennedy: 303-954-1567, lkennedy@denverpost.com or twitter.com/bylisakennedy
