“That Evening Sun” starts out as if it had been plucked from a Sundance time capsule circa the early 1990s: an elderly person raging against the indignities of old age, a rural setting, some low-key Southern humor.

But at some point, “That Evening Sun,” opening in limited release on Friday (11.06.09), changes tone and takes on a Faulknerian cast. It becomes edgier, a little more dangerous, a little less predictable. Yet writer-director Scott Teems avoids the pitfalls – the easy tragedy of senseless violence, for example - to find something more complex and fulfilling.

Teems is fortunate to have the marvelously resourceful Hal Holbrook to play Abner Meecham, in what, with a little luck, could be an Oscar-nominated performance. Abner, first seen withering with boredom in a nursing home, packs a bag and lights out, eventually catching a ride to Ackerman’s Field, Tenn., the hamlet he once called home.

But he finds that his farm and farmhouse are now occupied by the family of a local ne’er-do-well, Lonzo Choat (Ray McKinnon), for whom Abner has particular disdain. Worse, Lonzo has a lease-to-own deal, worked out with Abner’s lawyer son, Paul (Walton Goggins).

Abner is determined to get his house back – so he moves into what was the sharecropper’s house on the property and begins needling Lonzo. He visits an elderly former neighbor (Barry Corbin) and comes back with a dog that’s prone to barking – then teaches it to bark when he tells it not to. He counsels Lonzo’s unhappy teenage daughter (Mia Wasikowska) – and when Lonzo beats her after catching her with a boyfriend, Abner pulls a gun on him, then calls the sheriff to report him.

Films like this tend to mythologize a character like Abner, ennobling his quest and demonizing his opponents. “That Evening Sun,” from a story by William Gay, turns in a different direction, offering the possibility that the unreasonable one may in fact be Abner – that, rather than reclaiming a piece of life that has been unjustly wrested from his grasp, he is destructively clinging to a past that no longer exists, at a cost to those around him that he doesn’t seem to recognize.

Teems does this subtly, never giving Abner a scene that establishes him as delusional or unhinged. But he gradually makes it clear that, rather than trying to mollify Abner, his son may actually have his father’s best interest at heart – and may see Abner’s stubbornness for what it is, rather than as an expression of a free spirit resisting the attempt to cage it.

Teems also avoids obvious melodramatic plotting. The gun, contrary to Chekhov, is a threat that’s never actually utilized. The Faulknerian moments are undercut by human decency, rather than exploited for atavistic violence. The tragedy has more to do with a clearer understanding of the past, than an action in the moment.

Holbrook plays it all with an alternately flinty and amused certainty: Abner knows what he knows, says what he thinks and isn’t about to be talked out of anything. But Holbrook also conveys the moments of painful clarity, as Abner confronts memories of his late wife (Dixie Carter) and his inability to provide the tenderness she once sought.

McKinnon captures the pent-up frustration and the implicit violence of Lonzo Choat. He’s believably dislikable but also human, a man with a hard-won understanding that actions have consequences and an impulse-control mechanism that’s stretched to its limits. Corbin brings a perfect note of restraint and wit to the role of Thurl, Abner’s longtime neighbor and friend, whose sense of humor still works, even if other parts of his body are failing him.

“That Evening Sun” is something of a dark horse in this crowded end-of-year movie season: a small independent film without big stars or eye-popping special effects, dealing with an elderly character (the opposite of what the studios think the market wants). Instead, what it offers is a beautifully etched slice of a life that’s hardly extraordinary but always compelling.

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