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singedsunThis is a new movie, so I'll avoid actual plot spoilers, but I want to talk about this movie.
I know I'm overdue on some of my horror movie round-ups, and let me tell you I've watched some real doozies in the past couple of weeks. But this movie is new this weekend and I want to write and think about it while it's fresh in my mind.
I've mentioned before that Shirley Jackson is one of my favorite authors. The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle are two my favorite books, ever. I wish I'd been able to read them earlier in my life, I feel I would've found some real solace in reading about the relationships between Theo & Nell, or Merricat and Constance. Alas even as an adult, I've found Jackson's prose almost soothing despite the subject matter, and the strong female relationships amid troubled times reassuring.
Tonight I watched the new movie, Shirley, available now on Hulu. It stars Elizabeth Moss as Shirley Jackson and takes place in the late 1940s. It's being touted as a Biopic Shirley, but I'm going to strongly disagree with that classification. The story itself revolves around a couple, Rose & Fred, who move in with Shirley and her husband, Stanley. Fred is trying to become a professor at the college where Stanley teaches and has come to relieve his workload a little so that he can spend more time with his wife. Shirley has just recently published, "The Lottery" and is struggling with her next work. She's what can best be described as stubborn and depressed and in lack of a narrative for her story.
In Rose, she finds a friend and confidant. And while she whiles away hours on this new story she hopes to become a novel, Rose is centered in the narrative. We see her marriage with Fred struggle, Stanley seemingly dote and rely on her almost as a housewife in his own marriage. It's strange. The novel she's writing at the time is Hangsaman, a real novel Jackson published in 1951 about the life a girl who leaves an oppressive home life to attend a college much like the one where her husband taught.
The best parts of this movie are the long, cinematic dives into Shirley's mind as she finds her muse for this novel and begins picking at the threads of the narrative about a missing girl from the college where Stanley teaches, relying on Rose's help for care and errands and friendship. We get this superimposed views of what Shirley sees as she thinks about the girl in her story, what she did, what she looked like, how she might follow her a different places in the girl's life. And distantly these stirring shots of Shirley passed out or blacked out, lost in these visions as she lays appearing lifeless and lost inside the visions.
The movie doesn't seem to bear any witness to the life of the author that I know, which makes it so strange to be referenced so often in the media and sold in the trailers like a biopic, which isn't what this is. The movie is a fictional literary fantasy based on a book by Susan Scarf Merrill, "Shirley". [Goodreads]
what's interesting, given the time frame of this movie is that we see none of Shirley and Stanley's children. Of which there should've been at least one, maybe two by 1948/9. We also get so many references to We Haved Always Lived in the Castle, which was one of her last novels published in the 60s only a few years before she died.
I don't want to spoil the story in this movie, but I do strongly dislike the narrative of it, once the ending is revealed. I felt it really didn't place Shirley at the center, despite the movie and the life of her at the heart of it. The narrative framing makes it difficult to understand everything that's happening and the idea that it's in anyway a biopic, feels disingenuous to her actual life.
It does seem, at least based on the synopsis I've read, that the movie does follow the book that was written fairly closely, which makes me less inclined to check it out either. I don't know. I feel the film was lovingly shot, slightly thrilling, the tiniest bit erotic even. And Elizabeth Moss plays a great Shirley. Everything else though, felt disappointing.
I don't know, someone else watch it and tell me what you think. Trailer below.
I know I'm overdue on some of my horror movie round-ups, and let me tell you I've watched some real doozies in the past couple of weeks. But this movie is new this weekend and I want to write and think about it while it's fresh in my mind.
I've mentioned before that Shirley Jackson is one of my favorite authors. The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle are two my favorite books, ever. I wish I'd been able to read them earlier in my life, I feel I would've found some real solace in reading about the relationships between Theo & Nell, or Merricat and Constance. Alas even as an adult, I've found Jackson's prose almost soothing despite the subject matter, and the strong female relationships amid troubled times reassuring.
Tonight I watched the new movie, Shirley, available now on Hulu. It stars Elizabeth Moss as Shirley Jackson and takes place in the late 1940s. It's being touted as a Biopic Shirley, but I'm going to strongly disagree with that classification. The story itself revolves around a couple, Rose & Fred, who move in with Shirley and her husband, Stanley. Fred is trying to become a professor at the college where Stanley teaches and has come to relieve his workload a little so that he can spend more time with his wife. Shirley has just recently published, "The Lottery" and is struggling with her next work. She's what can best be described as stubborn and depressed and in lack of a narrative for her story.
In Rose, she finds a friend and confidant. And while she whiles away hours on this new story she hopes to become a novel, Rose is centered in the narrative. We see her marriage with Fred struggle, Stanley seemingly dote and rely on her almost as a housewife in his own marriage. It's strange. The novel she's writing at the time is Hangsaman, a real novel Jackson published in 1951 about the life a girl who leaves an oppressive home life to attend a college much like the one where her husband taught.
The best parts of this movie are the long, cinematic dives into Shirley's mind as she finds her muse for this novel and begins picking at the threads of the narrative about a missing girl from the college where Stanley teaches, relying on Rose's help for care and errands and friendship. We get this superimposed views of what Shirley sees as she thinks about the girl in her story, what she did, what she looked like, how she might follow her a different places in the girl's life. And distantly these stirring shots of Shirley passed out or blacked out, lost in these visions as she lays appearing lifeless and lost inside the visions.
The movie doesn't seem to bear any witness to the life of the author that I know, which makes it so strange to be referenced so often in the media and sold in the trailers like a biopic, which isn't what this is. The movie is a fictional literary fantasy based on a book by Susan Scarf Merrill, "Shirley". [Goodreads]
what's interesting, given the time frame of this movie is that we see none of Shirley and Stanley's children. Of which there should've been at least one, maybe two by 1948/9. We also get so many references to We Haved Always Lived in the Castle, which was one of her last novels published in the 60s only a few years before she died.
I don't want to spoil the story in this movie, but I do strongly dislike the narrative of it, once the ending is revealed. I felt it really didn't place Shirley at the center, despite the movie and the life of her at the heart of it. The narrative framing makes it difficult to understand everything that's happening and the idea that it's in anyway a biopic, feels disingenuous to her actual life.
It does seem, at least based on the synopsis I've read, that the movie does follow the book that was written fairly closely, which makes me less inclined to check it out either. I don't know. I feel the film was lovingly shot, slightly thrilling, the tiniest bit erotic even. And Elizabeth Moss plays a great Shirley. Everything else though, felt disappointing.
I don't know, someone else watch it and tell me what you think. Trailer below.
