Life is merciless when you belong to the lowest strata; second chances are hard to come by if not impossible; mere survival demands fighting tooth and nail; and empathy and self-respect turn out to be impediments instead of principles. Benjamin Caron’s crime drama, “Night Always Comes,” an adaptation of Willy Vlautin’s novel of the same name, showcases the extreme lengths economic struggle might push people to, with necessity blurring the line between right and wrong. With an out-of-luck lead’s palpable desperation, heightened tension, and anxiety adding a heavy dose of pathos, this bare-bodied drama is going to feel like a low blow in the present late stage of capitalism. The narrative, despite having some grievances, leaves no chance to portray itself as depressing, stress-inducing, and punishing as most of our lives have turned out to be.
Why Does Lynette Need the Money?
“Night Always Comes” begins with Lynette, a woman in her mid-thirties who lives with her Down syndrome-afflicted brother, Kenny, and negligent, self-absorbed mother, Doreen, in a rundown house somewhere in Portland. Fate has dealt a bad hand to Lynette; following the abandonment of her father, she is the only earning member of her family. She is juggling two jobs—in a bakery and in a bar—and still finding it impossible to make ends meet, as evident from the call of the loan officer Lynette receives early in the morning. Kenny is having a hard time in college; wants to contribute but Lynette is too protective of her brother to let him work on his own. The rent for their house is overdue by several months, and if she isn’t able to provide twenty-five dollars to the landlord today in order to buy the house, her family will be evicted. Lynette had a troubling past; it is hinted that she was involved in misdemeanors or small-time crimes, which led to her questionable credit score. This is the reason she needs her mother, Doreen, to be present as the guarantor while making payment to their landlord, David. Lynette and Kenny have their childhood memories attached to the house; and even without sentimental value, Lynette can’t bear the financial pressure of settling elsewhere. It doesn’t take much to realize that with the economy in shambles, Lynette has found herself at rock bottom.
But things can always get much, much worse, as proven when Doreen doesn’t show up during the deal and blows the twenty-five thousand dollars she had in her account by making a senseless, impulsive purchase – a fancy car. Lynette is appalled and shocked at her mother’s actions, but she is unable to convince her to return the car. After she pleads to David a number of times, he agrees to give her one more day; by then, Lynette has to fetch the amount anyhow to keep her family together.
Desperate Measures: Lynette’s Quest to Get the Money
Lynette knows that she cannot hope to gather such a hefty amount by conventional means; the problem is, her unconventional means are too extreme for her own good. Thus begins Lynette’s one night’s dark descent, which makes her confront her own self, and with every decision she makes, she gives in to her baser instincts and loses part of herself.
Lynette’s first attempt to get the money is returning to her secretive side gig as a sex worker. Her hope is to convince one of her wealthy clients, Scott, to lend her the money. She transforms herself into a different person both physically and mentally as she approaches Scott, hiding her desperation and anxieties under small talk and makeup. Scott’s refusal is brutal; Lynette zones out as she already starts wondering what her next course of action might be. After sleeping with Lynette, Scott leaves five hundred dollars as a parting gift, rubbing salt in her wound. Lynette’s impulsive nature comes to light as she steals Scott’s sports car and flees. Funnily enough, Scott can’t go to the authorities, as the car belongs to his wife, which means his dirty secrets will be exposed if he goes after Lynette. Except calling and threatening her, there is nothing he can do. However, Lynette panics as the gravity of her actions dawns upon her, and she leaves the car stranded before going to her friend, Gloria.
peppy and flamboyant Gloria works as an escort as well, and Lynette asks her for the three thousand dollars she had lent to her. Living in a luxurious apartment of one of her rich businessman clients, Gloria can’t cough up three thousand in an instant and offers Lynette five hundred dollars instead before leaving the apartment. Lynette betrays Gloria by trying to open the safe in the apartment, and failing to do so, she employs the help of Cody, an ex-con who works in the same bar she does. Lynette lies to Cody by pretending to be the owner of the apartment as she requests him to open the safe.
Cody initially hesitates to help Lynette; he doesn’t want to retreat through the life of crime that cost him his family, but four hundred dollars just to crack a safe is too good a deal for him to pass. However, Lynette has to confess the truth upon realizing that the safe can not be opened in the apartment without drawing unnecessary attention.
Cody takes Lynette to a shady side of the town, where a shady fixer, Henry, and his morbidly addicted brother, Carl, try to open the safe. Lynette need to take the safe back to where it belongs, which became impossible when Henry smashed it open using a sledgehammer. However, aside from a good amount of cash, packets of cocaine—which belong to Gloria’s client—are found inside the safe. Henry is immediately over the edge, as it can be surmised that he has faced severe drug-related problems in the past and Lynette has brought unnecessary trouble to his place. Henry and Carl turn against Cody and Lynette; fortunately, the duo manage to escape somehow after Lynette ends up injuring Carl severely by hitting him in the head. Lynette has taken the cash—nineteen thousand in total—and the packets of cocaine before fleeing the scene.
Cody empathizes with Lynette upon learning a bit more about her life and promises to give her four thousand to cover up the entire cost to purchase their house in exchange for Scott’s sports car. Distracted by her risky shenanigans, Lynette completely forgot to pick up her brother from the caretaker’s place, and as she brings Kenny, who gets on good terms with Cody. Eventually, Cody reveals that he was set up by a girl in the past, which led him to serve prison time. A shared sense of grief allows Lynette to trust Cody, and she brings him to the location where she left Scott’s car. However, Cody uses Kenny’s presence as an opportunity to rattle Lynette by causing a scene and snatches the ninety thousand stolen from the safe. Lynette’s rage, fuelled by her desperation, once again leads her to act impulsively, as she incapacitates Cody by running over him. As an injured Cody lies in pain, Lynette takes the money and drives away. For a moment, it seemed to me that Lynette would kill him, but whatever bits of humanity still exist within her prompt her not to.
Lynette’s Tragic Past
Kenny is obviously shaken, and Lynette needs to calm him down. I think it would have been better to drop him at home, given the kind of situation the poor guy finds himself in later—but it was a conscious choice by the makers to show the full extent of Lynette’s self-destructive approach. Anyway, she goes to a pawn shop owner, Tommy, to sell the packets of cocaine—and her traumatic past is revealed in their conversation. Lynette fell for a much, much older Tommy when she was 16 years old and left her family to stay with him. However, Tommy took advantage of a minor by pimping out Lynette to his friends and clients, and harrowing memories of that period comes flooding into Lynette’s mind. Tommy doesn’t take a minimum of accountability for his past actions, and as he doesn’t have four grand for cocaine at his disposal, he sends Lynette to his friend, Blake, who can help her in that regard.
Lynette approaches Blake, leaving Kenny for a while, and as she accompanies Blake to his room, he asks for sexual favors in exchange for the drug money. After a heated argument, Lynette initially lets her guard down to get a chance to finally escape by smashing a bottle in Blake’s head. A frantic Lynette isn’t able to find Kenny in Blake’s house party but eventually reunites with her brother, and the party attendees try to hold them captive under Blake’s command. It is a surprise that Lynette manages to escape the place with her brother at all, but not before getting injured by falling over a glass table. Almost losing her mind and her soul and jeopardizing her own life and that of her brother, Lynette has at last managed to gather the amount needed to keep their house.
What Happened to Lynette at the End?
At dawn, Lynette returns to her home with Kenny and is confronted by her mother. She requests Doreen to not pull that stunt she did the previous day by remaining absent. However, while removing glass shards from Lynette’s shoulders, Doreen confesses that she has too many bad memories attached to this house and never wanted to keep it in the first place. Also, she believes Lynette is still marked by demons of her past, and despite her attempts to turn a new page in her life, Lynette has not changed at all.In her defense, she asks Lynette to take the previous night’s affairs as an example of how she can’t help but gravitate towards a destructive, purposeless life. She remarks how Lynette’s actions put her brother’s life in danger as well. A broken Lynette realizes that his mother wants to escape from her, taking Kenny along—the family for whom she nearly lost her life is too afraid to be with her. Doreen doesn’t trust Lynette’s mind; she is aware of her daughter’s past and present predicament and believes that she is past the period of do-overs. A remorseful Lynette reminds her mother that Doreen wasn’t there for her when Lynette needed her the most. However, Doreen dodges accountability before mentioning that she has already planned to move elsewhere with Kenny.
As Lynette returns to her room, she receives David’s call, who shares that he has made up his mind to sell the house to another buyer in exchange for a marked-up price. Lynette hangs up the call; her mind has gone numb—everything she had to go through last night was for nothing. Her mother refuses to stay with her or to keep the house; the landlord has already sold it—which means nothing would have mattered anyway. Hit with a horrid sense of futility, Lynette finally gains clarity—as she packs up her things, bids farewell to Kenny, and moves out for good to rebuild her own life. In a parting letter addressed to her mother, Lynette states her honest admission that she did whatever she could to keep her family together. Even if that doesn’t seem to be justification enough for her actions to Doreen, this is the only way Lynette’s life has taught her to fight. Lynette believes Doreen’s words were a necessary wake-up call, as this time she will fight for herself without having expectations from anyone. As the movie ends, Lynette has emerged as a stronger person than who she was just a night ago. It won’t be possible for her to completely reform herself, but for what it’s worth, she is free and doesn’t have to feel the need to prove herself to anyone. Will she face repercussions for her actions? Will Cody and Gloria try to get back at Lynette for what she did in the near future? These questions don’t matter as much, as no matter how much more miserable Lynette’s life turns out to be, she will not be hurt as much as she was by severing ties with her close ones.
