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08/24/2017 12:01 AMRated PG-13
Many details about a character can be lost when a book is translated to film. In The Glass Castle, based on the best-selling memoir by Jeannette Walls, her childhood is condensed in dialogue, narration, or expressed on the face. Jeannette’s traumas are also stripped down in action, yet capable actors distill and re-imagine the family’s characters, centering on their love-hate relationship with a brilliant, but abusive, alcoholic father. The film jumps back and forth in time, which director Destin Daniel Cretton (The Shack) runs jaggedly, while Jeannette, who has re-invented her life as a New York magazine columnist, grapples with her memories. Brie Larson (Kong: Skull Island), who plays Jeannette, worked with Cretton in Short Term 12. Larson was powerful in that film and Room, but is a more porcelain presence here.
Jeannette’s family live as nomads, driving around in a battered station wagon, searching for the perfect place for Rex, played by an earnest Woody Harrelson (War for the Planet of the Apes, LBJ) to build his dream of a glass home. The backdrops speak volumes, from sleeping in the desert to forging homes out of dilapidated cabins. They finally settle in Rex’s hometown, Welch, West Virginia, where it’s apparent that Rex’s dream home will never be built.
Harrelson, in character, has a talent for exploding in rage and goes all out as Rex, who is effusively affectionate, but brutal when drunk. He teaches Jeannette to dream by giving her and his other children a star in the sky to claim for Christmas. He imparts his knowledge, but prevents their formal schooling. Plunging Jeannette into water, he yelps, “Sink or swim!” to toughen her up. He never protects her, and always has elaborate justifications ready. It’s too bad that Harrelson couldn’t be more gnarled and craggy, since during the credits, real footage of Rex captures his roughcast nature. Harrelson doesn’t have the furrowed face or voice of the damaged man who shaped Jeannette’s life.
Rose Mary, Jeannette’s mother (Naomi Watts: Insurgent, TV’s Twin Peaks), an artist, cares little for hands-on child care of her four children.
When tiny Jeannette, played by a doe-eyed Chandler Head (The Boss, A Walk in the Woods), says she’s hungry, one of many times the children go without eating, Rose Mary answers: “Would you rather me make some food that will be gone in an hour, or finish this painting that will last forever?”
That line sums up Rose Mary’s preferences, and when Jeannette tries to cook hot dogs, she sets herself on fire. The scars, physically and symbolically, plague her throughout her life. A more defiant adolescent Jeannette, played by Ella Anderson (The Boss, Mother’s Day) completes the solid line-up of actresses who go on her journey. Watts, although she takes on the straw hair and dumpster-diving mama persona, isn’t the core of The Glass Castle. Father and daughter take center stage. Jeannette’s siblings, played over time by several actors, do a good supporting job, but aren’t defined in depth and serve to heighten the chaos she tries to fix.
Jeannette reconciles with her past, which is resolved too simply in the film. She forgives, but also outsizes the happy moments, which don’t do justice to the complex way living with an alcoholic plays out. Such a journey doesn’t end in a neat package, it cycles around for a lifetime. With each revisit, something new is learned. Up until the film’s end, Jeannette’s story accomplishes just that.
Have you seen a movie recently that you’ve loved, or are you excited about one coming up? Send a short description of the movie and why you like it, to Pem McNerney at p.mcnerney@shorepublishing.com, along with a selfie of you at the movies. We’ll share it with our readers!