Netflix's 'Night Always Comes' Understands What It Means To Be Poor

I’ve written at length about this topic, but the thing about being poor is that bad luck follows you around like a stalker. You get fired from your job because your crappy car breaks down, because you can’t afford a better one, because you keep losing jobs when your car breaks down. If your insurance lapses because you can’t afford it, you’ll almost certainly get into an accident the next day. And if you somehow hustle and scrimp and save enough for a small nest egg to move into a better place, an unexpected medical bill will invariably wipe it out.

The deck isn’t just stacked against poor people — it actively works against them. Need a new bed for your kid? That means a payday loan with an exorbitant interest rate. And who’s least equipped to pay that interest? The very people forced to take those loans. Even if you make it to college, you’ll probably need three jobs to afford it, which makes actually passing your classes that much harder.

The system is built to keep poor people in their place. That’s why upward mobility in America is so rare. Only 4 percent of people who start in the bottom quintile ever climb to the top. The system is rigged.

That’s the world Netflix’s Night Always Comes emerges from. Vanessa Kirby plays Lynette, a woman juggling multiple minimum-wage jobs while moonlighting as a sex worker. She lives with her older brother, Kenny (Zack Gottsagen), who has Down syndrome, and their mother, Doreen (Jennifer Jason Leigh), who has little faith in her. Lyn owes money to a payday lender, is about to be evicted from a home already falling apart, and sees a narrow shot at escape: she convinces her mother to give her $25,000 so she can secure a predatory home loan for herself and her brother. But Doreen uses the money to buy a car instead, leaving Lynette stranded because when you’re poor, even your family can fail you.

Now Lyn has one night to come up with $25,000, or she and her brother will be living in her car. That desperation drives the film, as she spirals into a night of crime and danger, willing to risk everything for a shot at security.

Kirby delivers a raw, gripping performance in Night Always Comes, a film built to showcase her. Its themes were explored with more nuance in Killing Them Softly and with more entertainment value in the early seasons of Shameless, but director Benjamin Caron — working from a script by Willy Vlautin and Sarah Conradt — still grasps the truth: the desperation of poverty forces people into choices that only worsen their situation. There’s no easy way out. The harder you dig, the more dirt you’re covered in. Poverty is a trap, and crime doesn’t pay — unless you’re already rich. For most Americans, the only way to get ahead is to be born ahead.