Four stars. Rated PG-13, and generously, for dramatic intensity, family dysfunction, children in peril, and brief profanity
By Derrick Bang
And I thought Detroit was hard to watch.
(It is. So’s this one.)
As Friedrich Nietzsche observed,
That which does not kill us, makes us stronger.
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| Rex (Woody Harrelson, center), ever the ludicrous idealist, attempts to put a positive spin on the dilapicated shack that his family is about to call hom; everybody else — from left, Lori (Sadie Sink), Brian (Charlie Shotwell), Jeannette (Ella Anderson), Rose Mary (Naomi Watts) and Maureen (Eden Grace Redfield) — is justifiably appalled. |
Jeannette Walls must be pretty
damn strong.
Walls’ riveting — and frequently
heartbreaking — 2005 account of a childhood spent with nomadic and unstable
parents remained a fixture on the New
York Times Best Seller list for an astonishing 261 weeks. The book is a deeply
personal memoir told with grace, perceptive intelligence and unexpected wit; it
leaves readers not only with great respect for Walls — and her three siblings —
as survivors, but also emphasizes the spiritual importance of closure and
forgiveness.
Most readers undoubtedly finished
the final pages with awe, thinking, You’re a better, nobler soul than I, Ms.
Walls.
Her book has been transformed
into an equally compelling film by up-and-coming director Destin Daniel
Cretton, who with co-scripter Andrew Lanham has distilled the crucial essence
and vitality of Walls’ book, while miraculously finding the heart of a saga
that feels unrelentingly tragic. Granted, he had help: not only from his three
primary stars, but also from an impressively well-selected collection of young
actors.
Everybody turns in a masterful,
thoroughly persuasive performance. Which, of course, makes the film that much
harder to watch.
Cretton begins his film in 1989.
Jeannette (Brie Larson) is polished, poised and refined: every inch a late
twentysomething Manhattan journalist, regaling friends and professional acquaintances
with often hilarious tales of her encounters while penning the “Intelligencer”
column for New York magazine. She’s
engaged to marry David (Max Greenfield), an ambitious financial advisor on the
fast track to Big Apple aristocracy.
But we sense something. Jeannette
is too elegant: less a human being
and more a porcelain doll. Larson’s features are frozen, and she moves with a
stiffness that suggests fragility, and the possibility that she might shatter
at any moment.
A chance encounter during a
late-night taxi ride home calls up memories, at which point Cretton establishes
the format for his narrative: Jeannette’s saga will bounce back and forth, from
present to past, until the two intersect.
