brother jack

Wrestling with the realities of drug addiction is an endeavor rife with pitfalls for any filmmaker hoping to avoid easy judgment. To judge from the earliest, straight-on view in “Union County” of Will Poulter’s Cody — a weary-looking, tight-lipped young Ohio man absorbing the rules of a treatment program as explained by a courtroom judge — the sense is that we’re in for a ride-along hinged to honesty and the unfettered character work of a fine actor.

That empathy is welcome from first-time writer-director Adam Meeks, and he supports his approach with a gentle aura of verisimilitude, a mostly locked-down camera and, in the snippets of other testimonials, a suggestion that we’re in genuine spaces, not movie locations. Eventually, as the film tracks Cody’s progress through this rural stretch of central Ohio, it becomes clear we’re in a fictionalized story surrounded by real recovery participants and counselors, a backdrop of sincerity that allows a well-intentioned performance to breathe on its own.

That unaffected authenticity helps gird us for the quietly complicated tale “Union County” has to tell. Cody, who is living in his car when we meet him, isn’t alone as he starts this journey. Also in that courtroom that first day is his brother Jack (Noah Centineo), a more visibly restless and outgoing soul compared to Cody’s protective reticence. Jack, who is further along in the program and seems to bring Cody out of his shell, also helps him land a job at a lumber mill where he works. Tagging along to a campfire hang, Cody allows himself to talk to Anna (Elise Kibler) and we notice a potential spark.

But with that connection to Jack, initially forged as foster siblings but later as opioid buddies, comes risk. There’s a sister, too, played by Emily Meade, and her stone-faced appearance during a backslide in Cody’s recovery is a sign that with his past comes a lot he hasn’t faced yet. But as we learn more about Cody, Jack and the hard road ahead, “Union County” doesn’t pitch its treatment as a cure-all, nor engineer candidness into dramatic gold. Rather, Meeks merely asks us to clock the humanity in our every minute of observing Cody, to recognize what struggling looks like whether we “know” someone going through it or not.

Necessary to that approach, which brings to mind the watchful grace of last year’s stellar memory drama “Familiar Touch,” is the wonderful Poulter’s lived-in presence as someone trying to not even have a presence. Meeks knows when and where to give his lead character distance, respecting that opacity. In group sessions, where Cody typically doesn’t say much, the others speak for what Cody might be going through, Greek chorus-style. The effect is of watching someone float around the outside of a safe space. There’s tension in wondering if he’ll notice when it’s time to slip inside.

Social realist dramas aren’t new and they include award-winning landmarks by Ken Loach and Chloé Zhao. But they’re having a moment and “Union County” underscores why some work as well as they do. The right mix of true and imagined can give the simplest of humane narratives — in this case, the possibility of renewal in an epidemic of hurt — a fresher chance to touch us.