(Review: Patrick Compton - 7)
This is an uneven film that provokes
strongly mixed feelings with the quality register probably ending up in
positive territory.
For most of its two-hour running time, The Glass Castle is an absorbing,
powerfully acted drama about a dysfunctional American family as seen through
the eyes of the father’s favourite child.
At times, no punches are pulled, almost
literally, but at others, particularly in a contrived “happy” ending in which
the film opts for sentimental closure, we feel manipulated by the Hollywood
machine.
The movie is adapted by director Destin
Daniel Cretton and co-writer Andrew Lanham from the best-selling memoir of
magazine journalist Jeannette Walls. It stars the Oscar-winning actress Brie
Larson who gives an understated performance as the adult Jeannette in present
time, using extended flashbacks to take us back to her childhood.
Jeannette’s parents, Max (Woody Harrelson)
and Rose Mary (Naomi Watts) are, in their different ways, parents from hell.
Max, full of progressive talk and ambitious ideas, but almost entirely unable
to follow through on his promises, is an obnoxious drunk who can’t hold down a
job, shifting his family of three girls and a boy from town to town and shanty
home to shanty home, just ahead of the bill-collectors.
While he’s hitting the bottle, Max is an
abusive menace to his family; on the rare occasions he’s sober he shows a more
loving side and a capacity for becoming a far more impressive person. During
these moments the film conveys a certain charm as an offbeat coming of age
story.
For her part, Rose Mary is an artist first,
a wife second and a mother last. She’s weak, compliant to a fault, unable to
stand up to her husband and, more pertinently, to leave him in the interests of
her children.
Eventually, as time passes, the family
crisis boils over and the children begin to plot their escape from their family
jail.
The present-day action largely focuses on
Jeannette, a gossip columnist for a New York magazine, preparing for her
marriage to a financial analyst. It is apparent that her virtually homeless
father still has the power to unsettle her.
The cast is a particularly strong one and
Harrelson is impressive as the abusive father who reserves his strongest
feelings for his oldest daughter. While we discover that his behaviour is not
without its causes, his complete inability to address his issues is lamentable
in the light of what he does to his family. It is against this background that
the film’s ending – in which we are encouraged to give Max and Rose Mary a
break – is so regrettable.
Of the three actresses who play Jeannette,
it is Ella Anderson who comes up trumps with a heartbreakingly complex
portrayal of a girl who simultaneously adores and fears her daddy.
The
Glass Castle opened at Gateway on September 8. –
Patrick Compton
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