The Glass Castle

THE GLASS CASTLE (Destin Daniel Cretton, 2017)

The Walls family doesn’t have much in THE GLASS CASTLE, but as far as father Rex (Woody Harrelson) and mother Rose Mary (Naomi Watts) are concerned, that’s all part of the adventure in their nomadic way of life. Rex is an alcoholic who can’t hold a job for long and is often rushing his family out of town to avoid the police or those seeking overdue payment. Rose Mary spends her days painting and enabling Rex’s destructive behavior. The family moves constantly, relocating all over the western U.S. before the reluctant return to Rex’s hometown of Welch, West Virginia. The shabby home where they place roots is no glass castle, the long-promised and aspirational home Rex talks of building, but at least it provides some stability.

THE GLASS CASTLE is based on the memoir by Jeannette Walls, Rex and Rose Mary’s second oldest child, and the film is told from her perspective. Played at different ages by Chandler Head, Ella Anderson, and Brie Larson, Jeannette admires and tries to help her father while regularly being disappointed by him. She eventually saves enough money to flee West Virginia, get a college degree, and become a professional success as a writer in New York City, yet her parents are the shadow she can’t shake. She lies about her family in social situations, and it’s not hard to see why. When Rex and Rose Mary move to the Big Apple, she does not avoid them, but she is ashamed that they are squatters who sift through the trash to survive.

Co-writer and director Destin Daniel Cretton studied those coping with trauma in his previous film, SHORT TERM 12. THE GLASS CASTLE also explores the cycle of abuse, although this time he focuses on the dysfunction within a single family. To the average person, the squalor and extreme poverty the Walls family lives in is horrifying, yet Cretton emphasizes how normal these conditions seem to those who don’t know anything different and have just accepted it. Rex and Rose Mary romanticize their dire situation, a strategy which comes off like self-protection and a manifestation of mental illness. They don’t beat their children, but the neglect and psychological damage they inflict is no less harmful. It is sad but altogether unsurprising to discover that the unhealthy dynamic Rex and Rose Mary raise their kids in looks better when compared to the upbringing he had.

Although viewers will surely leave the film unlikely to feel charitable toward the parents, THE GLASS CASTLE isn’t interested in judging Rex and Rose Mary. In it and SHORT TERM 12 Cretton seeks for the victim to move on from steeping in deserved resentment, as hard as that may be. Jeannette loves her mom and dad and despairs at the wreckage they’ve made of their lives and and its effect on her. Seen through her eyes, the film demonstrates enormous amounts of empathy and forgiveness while not discounting all the complicated and conflicted feelings churning inside the Walls children. THE GLASS CASTLE wrestles with how to integrate the positive qualities and memories with all of the pain those same people brought on.

When Jeannette is a child, Rex tells her about the point that’s hard to distinguish where a flame ends but heat is visible in a clear, wavering form. He explains that this place is between turbulence and order, where rules don’t apply. Rex and Rose Mary choose to occupy this space but fail to recognize that this zone distorts what is seen in it. They are not beholden to anyone, but their situation is stifling more than it is freeing. THE GLASS CASTLE carries you through a range of emotions with this family. Harrelson in particular is adept at showing how an important family member can attract and repel loved ones to the point of confusion. THE GLASS CASTLE permits the knotty family relationships to stand as complex, unresolved interactions, which is why showing the real people in the end credits seems like a mistake. Perhaps Jeannette and her siblings have worked through all their grievances, but the way the subjects of the dramatized story are presented, it comes across like an apology of sorts or a hastily applied but ineffective bandage. The film embraced the contradictions and opposing feelings, so it feels like being undermined somewhat with the conventional happy ending suggested when the real Walls family appears.

Grade: B

While We're Young

WHILE WE’RE YOUNG (Noah Baumbach, 2014)

Each generation tends to look at the next one with some suspicion that they don’t live up to the standards they hold dear. As the saying goes, youth is wasted on the young. With Generation X in middle age, the time has come for them--us, in my case--to judge the habits, interests, and attitudes of millenials. In WHILE WE’RE YOUNG 44-year-old documentarian Josh (Ben Stiller) and his 43-year-old producer wife Cornelia (Naomi Watts) strike up a friendship with 25-year-old couple Jamie (Adam Driver) and Darby (Amanda Seyfried). Josh and Cornelia are childless and feeling increasingly alienated from their friends because of it, so they are drawn to the burgeoning filmmaker husband and his ice cream-making wife. Josh is especially taken with Jamie’s relentless optimism, DIY ethos, and unconstrained tastes and tries them on for size.

Writer-director Noah Baumbach opens WHILE WE’RE YOUNG with a passage from Ibsen’s THE MASTER BUILDER about being fearful of young people outside but encouraged to open the door followed by James Murphy’s toy box-sounding cover of David Bowie’s “Golden Years”. The film ends with the Bowie original and Wings’ “Let ‘Em In” on the soundtrack. The quotation and songs provide mirror bookends representing the aspirations Josh and Cornelia examine when faced with younger adults’ ways. Are they serious and cultured or sentimental and domesticized? When discussing their lives early in the film, Josh says, “Maybe the point is we have the freedom. What we do with it isn’t so important.” The pointed comedy of the comment is that the freedom they profess to cherish is really just a wasted resource they cling to rather than admit they’ve entered another time in their lives.

Baumbach mines the humor in the resistance to adapting to a new life stage, the foolishness of trying to act younger, and the perceived ridiculousness of how millenials assert their independence and preferences. Editor Jennifer Lame cuts Cornelia attending a mommy and me music class as if she’s entered a house of horrors. Josh suffers the indignity of looking older than he is by borrowing today’s youth fashion as if it suits him. WHILE WE’RE YOUNG practically drips contempt for what twentysomethings consider cool. Baumbach obliterates some easy targets, but the film is no less funny because of it.

Driver’s embodiment of a stereotypical hipster is a consistent source of jokes. After Josh’s infatuation with Jamie has ended, he describes his counterpart as imitating a sincere person he once saw. Baumbach doesn’t withhold any criticism of a younger generation he thinks can be vacuous and disingenuous, yet he doesn’t spare those in middle age. Where Jamie lacks boundaries and hides his careerism, Josh prizes the purist notion of not selling out and retaining authenticity, which are fine ideals until they become stifling to the point of inaction. WHILE WE’RE YOUNG soaks in the bitter comedy that comes in realizing that everyone is searching for answers.

Grade: B+

St. Vincent

ST. VINCENT (Theodore Melfi, 2014)

Vincent MacKenna (Bill Murray) may not be the last person a working mother would choose to babysit her child after school, but he’s surely toward the bottom of the list. Although his overwhelmed new neighbor Maggie (Melissa McCarthy) isn’t privy to the information that an often-drunk Vincent is indebted to an unsavory racetrack figure (Terrence Howard) and keeps a weekly home appointment with a pregnant Russian hooker (Naomi Watts), the senior citizen’s surly nature should be sufficient to have her look elsewhere for childcare options. Nevertheless, in ST. VINCENT her son Oliver (Jaeden Lieberher) seems to get along fine with the crusty old man next door who begrudgingly helps after the boy’s classmates steal his possessions from his gym locker.

Maggie is working long hours at a new hospital job and worrying about an impending custody fight with her ex-husband, so she’s thankful that anyone can keep an eye on Oliver. Little does she know that Vincent is teaching him how to fight back against the bullies at St. Patrick’s School, letting him gamble at Belmont Park, and taking him to a bar. Oliver is well aware of the pressures on his mother. He covers up and omits telling her his activities with Vincent, leaving Maggie to find out the truth at the most inopportune time possible.

Writer-director Theodore Melfi’s ST. VINCENT seems cobbled from the independent film cliché handbook. It’s slightly quirkier than a conventional network television sitcom yet beholden to a feel-good imperative that isn’t especially convincing. By picking up and discarding subplots like tissues, this maudlin comedy-drama cycles Murray through a range of situations fit for an awards show reel without lending much emotional heft to them.

Murray’s bad grandpa proxy plays best when permitted to be his crotchety self without explanations or excuses. Vincent’s rough edges are never sanded off completely, and Murray is funnier and more interesting when he’s granted the freedom to be as nasty as he wants to be, at least within the limits of this sentimental film. Clearly Vincent is on a course for a redemptive arc, but offering reasons in shorthand for his hardness make him a less credible character. The war between his internal tenderness and external abrasiveness aren’t reconciled so much as they are dispelled by gooey screenwriting conveniences.

ST. VINCENT’s variation on ABOUT A BOY should find its strength in developing the mutually beneficial relationship between a curmudgeon and pre-teen. In piling on the plot contrivances it doesn’t provide the space to observe why their unlikely friendship comes to gain great meaning for both. Melfi has the film chugging toward a prescribed heartwarming conclusion and Oliver’s effective sanctifying speech while Murray’s performance suggests someone who may be touched that the boy admires him but hasn’t really learned any lessons that will significantly alter his behavior. The final scene, with Vincent sneaking a cigarette and singing along to Bob Dylan’s “Shelter from the Storm” during the end credits may be meant as a grace note, but it gives the impression of a character that’s broken away from its creator’s intent.

Grade: C

The Impossible

THE IMPOSSIBLE (Juan Antonio Bayona, 2012)

THE IMPOSSIBLE dramatizes one incredible true story to emerge from the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the deadliest natural disaster of its kind on record.  Like many others, Henry and Maria Bennett (Ewan McGregor and Naomi Watts) and their three boys have come to Khao Lak, Thailand for Christmas vacation.  They’re relaxing by the resort’s pool when the tsunami hits the southeast Asian coast.

Maria and her oldest son Lucas (Tom Holland) surface from the floodwater near each other.  He’s scraped up but otherwise in good shape.  She’s received large wounds in her leg and side but, with her son’s assistance, is able to hobble to the safety of a tree. They suspect the rest of their family is dead.  Their own survival is also a question.

Some locals eventually discover them and provide help.  Maria is taken to the hospital, but her injuries and a staff overwhelmed by the number of patients mean that she’s far from being in the clear.

Director Juan Antonio Bayona stages the tsunami as though an enormous monster has risen from the ocean.  The birds are spooked, and in the distance trees in its path are toppled like blades of grass by a lawnmower.  Then the wave spills into the resort, casting people aside like rag dolls and smashing the buildings.  In the even more terrifying sequence that follows, survivors are desperate to keep their heads above water while being swept across the flooded landscape.  Potentially dangerous obstacles bob along the surface while even more hide below.  With heart-stopping immediacy, Bayona plunges into the midst of the disaster while making it seem unimaginable that anyone could make it out alive if near the shore when the giant wave first reaches land.

The challenges in the disaster’s aftermath are anything but minor, yet once the survivors reach safe ground, THE IMPOSSIBLE loses dramatic urgency.  For as tragic and horrific an event as this was, the Bennetts have a relatively easy time of it in retrospect. At least that’s how the screenplay frames their experiences, especially in comparison to the hardships of their fellow tourists and the mostly ignored Thai residents.  The post-tsunami period brings chaos of a different kind, but the protagonists manage to navigate it as though it’s but an inconvenience.

Few actresses suffer as expressively on screen as Watts.  In THE IMPOSSIBLE she beautifully conveys a mother’s will to endure her suffering for the sake of those she loves.  Holland does good work as a kid who is forced to be strong in an unthinkable situation.  THE IMPOSSIBLE doesn’t turn a blind eye to the physical and emotional devastation, but the comparatively uncomplicated path it follows to arrive at a reassuring conclusion minimizes the impact.

Grade: C+

J. Edgar

J. EDGAR (Clint Eastwood, 2011)

In the biographical picture J. EDGAR director Clint Eastwood and screenwriter Dustin Lance Black track the career of the longtime Federal Bureau of Investigation director.  Leonardo DiCaprio stars as J. Edgar Hoover, a morally certain man who improved and expanded the once-Bureau of Investigation’s ability to fight crime, although not without amassing his share of detractors.  

Hoover rose to the top in 1924, saw the agency become federal in 1935, and stayed until his 1972 death.  The legality of his methods, not to mention his secret files, made him powerful and controversial.

Framed by the head G-Man dictating his memoir, J. EDGAR has a lot of territory to cover and does so swiftly.  The Palmer raids, the Lindbergh baby abduction, and the relentless pursuit of gangsters and political subversives are tied together in a fleet, often exhilarating yarn of a righteous man who will not rest until he has stamped out all criminal and radical elements.  Hoover is clear and authoritative when recounting his accomplishments, yet J. EDGAR questions how reliable of a narrator he is and at what cost such unyielding professional striving did to the individual and the nation.

The successful but petty and vindictive man at the center of J. EDGAR is as much a mystery as what he kept in his confidential files.  Eastwood and Black give Hoover credit where it’s due, especially in the admiration for his organizational rigor and faith in scientific evidence as a valuable tool.  The speculative private life they give him, in which he and associate director Clyde Tolson (Armie Hammer) share a closeted and presumably unconsummated relationship, goes a long way in humanizing a man who would ride roughshod over the livelihoods of his subordinates and perceived enemies.

DiCaprio does marvelous work portraying a man who, frankly, seems like he would have been unpleasant company, even to those long loyal to him.  Hoover’s magnetism derives from his intellect, certainty, power, and sense for myth-making, and DiCaprio bears that out with a performance of a man who himself may be constantly performing as though he has nothing to hide.  Hammer’s Tolson seems in awe of and puzzled by his friend and co-worker.  Hoover’s longtime secretary Helen Gandy (Naomi Watts) demonstrates great respect and empathy even as she appears not to understand this man she’s know for decades.  Something must have earned their dedication.  That mystery is what encourages looking even closer at this blank slate of a person.

Grade: B