Where the Crawdads Sing

 

Director Olivia Newman

Producer Reese Witherspoon with lead cast

cinematographer Polly Morgan with Daisy Edgar-Jones

Mark and Delia Owens

Author Delia Owens

Delia Owens

Newman, Witherspoon,Edgar-Jones,Taylor John Smith, and Owens

WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING    C                                                                                     USA  (125 mi)  2022  ‘Scope  d: Olivia Newman

Sometimes I feel so invisible, I wonder if I’m here at all.                                                               —Kya (Daisy Edgar-Jones)

A cinematic interpretation of the best-selling novel by Delia Owens, topping The New York Times bestseller list for two years in a row in 2019 and 2020, making her fiction debut at the age of 70, with a script written by Lucy Alibar, who seems to have a thing for movies set in southern states, having previously written the Oscar-nominated screenplay for the southern Gothic depiction in Benh Zeitlin’s 2012 Top Ten Films of the Year: #1 Beasts of the Southern Wild, and while filmed in Louisiana, this one is set in the marshlands of North Carolina, near a fictional town called Barkley Cove.  Produced and championed by actress Reese Witherspoon, who advocates female-centric stories, gushing endlessly about how much she loves the novel, describing it as “a love letter to growing up in the South,” with the popular novel selling 22 million copies, Excerpt from Where the Crawdads Sing - Delia Owens, part coming-of-age novel and part crime drama, intertwining issues of law, race, gender, morality, and murder, but it is not without controversy, as part of author Delia Owens’ hidden past has come to light, having been involved in a real-life murder case with her now-estranged husband Mark Owens and his son Christopher.  Like the protagonist in the story, Owens had a lifelong love of nature and wildlife, having studied biology at the University of Georgia, where she met her husband Mark, receiving a degree in zoology before obtaining a doctorate in animal behavior from the University of California at Davis, both avid conservationists moving to Africa to study animals in their natural habitat, spending more than twenty years there, writing several books and articles for professional journals, yet what they really found deplorable was the rampant poaching of elephants and rhinoceroses in Zambia who were senselessly killed for illegal tusks and horns that could be sold on the black market.  Desperate to stop this bloody practice, their activism grew more militant, seeing themselves as guardians of the wildlife, instilling a white savior approach to policing the Zambian wildlife preserves, with Mark and his son conducting airborne raids against poaching camps, where they were emboldened enough to call an ABC News show Turning Point to follow them on one of their raids, with their cameras capturing footage of a suspected black African poacher who was actually shot on camera, wounded initially, followed by several more rounds coming from offscreen until he was dead, which aired in a documentary special entitled Deadly Game: The Mark and Delia Owens Story on March 30, 1996.  An in-depth investigative article was written by Jeffrey Goldberg from The New Yorker, March 29, 2010, The Hunted | The New Yorker, where he actually interviewed the cameraman, Chris Everson, who shot the TV footage, who identified Christopher as the shooter responsible for the deadly rounds.  Owens rarely discusses this matter in public, having distanced herself from the event and the participants, simply claiming she was not involved in the shooting, though she and the others are still wanted for questioning by the Zambian police, as the body has never been found, evidently dropped from a helicopter into a nearby lagoon, likely devoured by crocodiles, with all three of them leaving the country immediately afterwards and have never returned.  One of the things that stands out is that the 2018 novel echoes many of the same themes from Delia Owens’ life in Zambia, drawing on her experience of living in the wilderness, cut off from society, with eerie similarities to the murder there, while also including a pattern of perpetuating racial stereotypes.  Even the jailhouse cat whom the protagonist befriends while awaiting trial is named after a Zambian man, Sunday Justice, who once worked in the Owens’ camp as a cook.  This is simply the backdrop to the film, which became a hot topic when Taylor Swift wrote an Instagram post that she was a big fan of the book, adding eyes to the project, writing that she “wanted to create something haunting and ethereal to match this mesmerizing story,” writing a song that plays over the end credits, Taylor Swift - Carolina (From The Motion Picture “Where The ... YouTube (2:53), using mostly women in key creative positions, directed by Olivia Newman, who has a Master’s degree in film from Columbia University.

A film that screams Hallmark made-for-TV movie where women are a central focus, with parallels to the trial sequence in Robert Mulligan’s To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), while also recalling Mary Steenburgen in Martin Ritt’s CROSS CREEK (1983), a fictionalized adaptation of a trip to the back woods of Florida in the 1930’s where author Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Yearling, based in part on Rawlings’ 1942 memoir Cross Creek, yet also Andrei Konchalovsky’s SHY PEOPLE (1987), a Faulknerian story set in the back bayous of southern Louisiana.  With a production budget of $24 million, this is a story about abandonment, domestic abuse and neglect, the long-lasting impact of trauma, the power of literacy and friendship, and the wild, beautiful spaces of the marsh, where the naturalistic setting is the film’s calling card and is the dominant aspect overshadowing all else, WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING – First 10 Minutes YouTube (9:57), although it’s hard to miss a flying CGI heron in the opening sequence that transports us into the marsh, opening in 1969 with a dead body discovered at the bottom of a 63-foot tall observational fire tower, with the police attempting to discover if the victim was intentionally pushed or whether it was accidental.  “A swamp knows all about death, and doesn’t necessarily define it as tragedy, certainly not a sin.”  Moving back and forth between different periods, with the changing timelines shown on the screen, another flashback to the early 1950’s reveals a backwoods family living along a pristine marsh with an alcoholic and abusive father, whose violence against his wife and kids drives them away from the home one by one, leaving ten-year old Kya Clark (Jojo Regina) alone after her father leaves, creating a series of improbable events, where she is forced to raise herself in that isolated swamp accessible only by boat traffic, with no electricity or running water.  Kya is the lead protagonist, much like Delia Owens, a naturalist and loner, shunned by the neighboring town and community, who view her only with derision and contempt, disdainfully referred to as the “Marsh girl,” mocked for her poverty and ridiculed out of school on her very first day, leaving her unable to read or write as she grows up, instead she spends her time observing and drawing the natural wildlife, especially the birds, developing an extraordinary artistic talent, where her shack is lined with these watercolors.  She is also a curious collector of feathers, shells, leaves, flowers, and other wild things, assembling quite a collection, where her home becomes a repository of these discovered items, like a “glass menagerie.”  Her only friends in town are a black couple running a general store, Mabel and Jumpin’ Madison, (Charlene Michael Hyatt and Sterling Macer Jr.), who assume the role of guardians once all her family has left, the only ones really looking out for her, and she survives by selling them mussels.  Based on her outsider status, ostracized and reviled by the community, where she pretty much just keeps to herself, she is the likely suspect in the opening murder, with the police arresting her, building a case solely on circumstantial evidence, yet her name is dragged through the mud all over town, where the only townsperson willing to look through the glaring wall of prejudice is retired attorney Tom Milton (David Strathairn).  There is a stark contrast between the purity of innocence that Kya represents, completely immersed in the world of the marsh, befriending the wildlife, her one and only real friend, where her moral compass, social expectations, and concept of justice are shaped by observing the natural world, while the real dangers and threats come from the contaminating influences of town.  Where most individuals would struggle with isolation and self-preservation, Kya learned to thrive, enjoying every tiny aspect of nature, learning that everything is interconnected, all in harmony with the elements.  Once she’s older, blossoming into British actress Daisy Edgar-Jones, requiring a dialect coach to learn a southern accent, she eloquently narrates the story through a series of continuing voiceovers, adding a literary aspect along with wisdom beyond her years, and a perspective that is all her own, something of a wild child, yet restrained and self-reflective, never looking dirty or unkempt, with no sign whatsoever of bugs or mosquitoes out in the marsh, which is a bit of a mystery, seemingly impossible, so viewers are equally transported into a world of make-believe, which is sumptuously shot in ‘Scope by Polly Morgan, with music by Mychael Danna.

Equally improbable is a series of two drastically different love interests, neither one fully fleshed out, feeling more like movie characters, expressed through flashback sequences as Kya languishes in prison awaiting her trial, as Kya is befriended by Tate Walker (Taylor John Smith), having run into him throughout her childhood fishing in the marsh, finally meeting him out in the woods, lured by feathers left behind on an old tree stump, both sharing a common interest in nature, but he’s about to head off to college to study biology, but before he does he lends her books and teaches her to read and write, even writing down names of publishers that she can send her drawings off to for a possible book, providing another potential source of income.  Both seem inseparable, but his father warns him that rumors about them could jeopardize his future.  He heads off early for a job working in the biology lab, but promises to return on the 4th of July, asking her to meet him, but when the night arrives he’s a no show, leaving her utterly devastated, Where the Crawdads Sing (2022) - Tate Doesn't Come Back ... YouTube (3:09), where her many years of loneliness only accentuate the excruciating feeling of loss, “Being alone is a pain whose vastness is so great you can hear echoes.”  Miraculously, one of the publishers comes through, enthusiastically supporting her work, where the money she earns actually allows her to buy up all the land around the property, ensuring that it’s not stolen out from under her by developers, who are planning luxury condos out in the marsh.  Years later she begins a relationship with Chase Andrews, played by Harris Dickinson from Eliza Hittman’s Beach Rats (2017) and Ruben Östlund’s Triangle of Sadness (Sans Filtre) (2022), a pompous and promiscuous football star who is something of a charmer and sweet talker, used to getting everything he wants, and he wants Kya.  While viewers can spot a cad immediately, Kya is not so worldly, and is more easily ensnared, with next to nothing known about this man, often taking her feelings for granted for his own sexual pleasure, where he seems to manipulate her at every turn, even making plans for marriage without even asking her, but he does find a rare shell that she makes into a necklace and gives back to him, which he never takes off, but the real kicker happens when she sees him in town with another girl who’s engaged to be his wife.  This deception hits like a ton of bricks, where she really doesn’t want to have anything more to do with him, but he doesn’t take no for an answer, drunkenly having his way with her, punching her in the face and forcing himself on her, violently raping her, where she has to beat him in the head with a rock to get him off of her.  She had seen this violent behavior before with her father, “One thing I learned from Pa, these men must have the last punch,” where destruction is a way of punctuating their pent-up rage and anger, as he ends up trashing her home, with destroyed drawings strewn all over the place.  Shortly afterwards she is arrested for his murder, though she was in another town visiting with her publishers for the first time face to face, celebrating yet another published book, but the prosecutor believes she could conceivably have disguised herself while taking a night bus back to Barkley Cove and back again with none of the publishers noticing her absence.  Nonetheless, it’s a disturbing time, turning into an extended trial sequence, where the victim is none other than Chase Andrews (Owens’ version of a poacher), a local big shot, as his parents are loaded with money, where it’s their influence that is driving the trial, literally demanding her conviction after that necklace he was wearing goes missing at the time of his death, suggesting only Kya would have any real interest.  The direction of this film is simply unremarkable, with problematic characters, as Kya is overly saccharine and sweet, even saintly, while the men in her life are predictably one-dimensional, and the supporting characters in town couldn’t be more diabolically stereotypical, with the entire town literally sneering at this girl, treating her with nothing but contempt, preferring to believe she’s an inferior uncivilized being out in the marsh, where they don’t begin to understand or appreciate who she really is, much more intelligent and morally complex than they give her credit for.  It’s something of a sentimentalized mystery movie, where small-town prejudice is a prevailing theme, but despite a reverence for nature, with wild creatures doing what they need to do in order to survive, it’s a tepid, overly sanitized and simplistic rendering that is never fully believable.   

On Swift Horses

 

Director Daniel Minahan

author Shannon Pufahl

ON SWIFT HORSES             B                                                                                                     USA  (117 mi)  2024  d: Daniel Minahan

You ever feel like that, though?  Like there’s just this narrow window of time when what you want might come to you?

A mostly slow and quiet 50’s film about forbidden desires, or the underside of the American Dream, where people are not what they appear to be or act like we expect, carefully concealing their queer desires in order to be accepted into the Eisenhower postwar mainstream, when white conservatism was guided by rules that excluded anyone who was different, often violently, feeling no remorse whatsoever in their exclusionary behavior, nothing to apologize for, as a fast track to success depended on it.  Adapted by Bryce Kass from the 2019 novel by Shannon Pufahl (an excerpt may be read here: On Swift Horses), now teaching creative writing at Stanford University, who grew up in rural Kansas, inspired by memories of her own grandmother, dedicating the book to her, introducing the young author to the world of gambling at a young age, accompanying her on many trips to Las Vegas, driving from one gambling mecca to the next, setting the story in the mid-50’s, a time of promise, yet also dreams deferred, exploring repressed desires and a fluctuating identity during a time when the nation was going through a major peacetime transformation, not yet sure what to expect, yet the outlook for the future was an unlimited horizon.  Exuding a strong sense of place, inimitably drawn to the 1950’s American West, a time that preceded the Civil Rights movement of the 60’s, typically seen through the eyes of straight white men, this film is rich with detail, showcasing unique characters who counter the narrative of a conservatively safe and secure America, where they are instead willing to take risks, gambling with their lives that something better lies ahead. Described by the director as “a re-imagining of the American Dream through a queer lens,” this film relies on small coded gestures, like a glance, a lingering touch, or a matchbook passed along, where gambling is used as a metaphor for being queer during a time when it was extremely dangerous, considered a crime, something kept under the rug, with almost no public discourse about it, barely ever mentioned or talked about in the mainstream, yet they are ordinary people leading ordinary lives.  While he’s worked in television, including several episodes of Game of Thrones (2011 – 2019), as well as American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace (2018), this is only the second film from this director since the comedy noir thriller SERIES 7: THE CONTENDERS (2001), an edgy satire on reality TV shows run wild.  Very faithful to the book, a historical fiction novel with LGBTQ+ themes, and while it pales in comparison to the generation-defining Ang Lee adaptation of Brokeback Mountain (2005), this film offers a vision of the 50’s that is distinctly at odds with the idea that this decade was an American golden age, evocative of the subversive melodramas of Douglas Sirk, like All That Heaven Allows (1955) and Written On the Wind (1956), or Todd Haynes’ FAR FROM HEAVEN (2002) and 2015 Top Ten List #6 Carol, with a nod to Sam Mendes’ Revolutionary Road (2008), reminding us that there was never a time when women didn’t work outside the home, where nostalgic reflections often omit the bigotry and oppression experienced.  Beautifully shot by Luc Montpellier, Sarah Polley’s cinematographer who shot Take This Waltz (2011) and 2023 Top Ten List #1 Women Talking, this is part romance, part suspense thriller, and part drama, filled with multiple meandering subplots, where in the end the disparate elements may never really come together, feeling uneven, lacking a coherent vision, but there’s a literary aspect that feels intimately familiar.    

In the immediate aftermath of the Korean War, atomic bombs are being tested in the empty desert outside of Las Vegas, a spectacle that literally lights up the skies, drawing plenty of spectators, yet it’s also an era of suburban sprawl and a massive national highway movement connecting the entire country together, while there are also advancements in color television, all of which plays in the background of the story, cleverly announced by a melancholic Loren Kramar cover version of 1959 HITS ARCHIVE: Mr. Blue - Fleetwoods (a #1 record) YouTube (2:23), which plays over a collage of photo albums from the period, with an original score composed by Mark Orton.  Muriel (Daisy Edgar-Jones) and Lee (Will Poulter) are living a quiet life in an isolated part of Kansas, in a home Muriel’s late mother left to her, with floral wallpaper and old wooden furniture, where no neighbor can be seen for miles, yet the prevailing sentiment is that Muriel feels “orphaned and alone” after the death of her mother, the first woman in town to get a car, a college degree, and a divorce, so out of respect for her mother’s independence she’s been coy to Lee’s persistent marriage requests.  But that all changes when Lee’s more charismatic brother Julius arrives, played by Australian actor Jacob Elordi, who inhabited the role of Elvis Presley in Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla (2023), playing another free spirit of a different kind here, a wayward gambler with a secret past, whose mere presence stirs something deep inside Muriel, both feeling the same sense of alienation, like two lost souls.  The two brothers are close, having made a pact during the war that they would pool their money to buy a home together when the war was over, with the home providing a stability they never had, so for Lee, marriage is essential, as that embodies his conception of “home.”  Julius is more of a free spirit, immediately drawing the attention of Muriel, fascinated by his easygoing freedom, feeling an attraction that was not about sex which she doesn’t fully understand, yet both are acutely observant outsiders, making her feel that “the world was bigger than she had imagined.”  This idea of a love triangle incites a sudden interest in marriage, but as soon as they trek across the country to discover a brand new housing development in San Diego, Julius vanishes for Las Vegas, sleeping with women and men for money, eventually hooking up with a Vegas casino as part of their security detail, where his job is to surveil the customers from a one-way mirror located above the floor, where he can view them undetected from a variety of angles, earning extra bonuses when he spots cheaters, who are never prosecuted, but taken out back where they are brutally pummeled and run out of town.  It’s Lee’s dream to own a suburban house, one that Muriel acquiesces to, even if that means she’ll have to sell her mother’s house, which for her is a personal oasis and her only real connection to family, one of the many sacrifices she’ll have to make in the interest of keeping up appearances, which is all a façade, as she’s never really loved Lee or wanted to be part of his straightlaced world, but was always more fascinated by his restless brother, lured by his existential angst, yet Lee has warned her about Julius, “He’s not like us; his passions are different…he gets to live like there’s no tomorrow.”  Nonetheless, they secretly correspond with one another by mail, encouraging each other, sharing their private thoughts, unbeknownst to her husband.  Yet the manner in which this evolves can feel overly predetermined, lacking any feeling of naturalness or spontaneity, where it all fits together, but lacks dramatic urgency until the final few sequences that add a distinctly poetic texture.  

In something of parallel stories, the heart of the film is following the secret lives of both Muriel and Julius, both using deception as a means of self-preservation, with Muriel working as a waitress at a racetrack café, keeping notes on what she’s able to overhear, then placing bets accordingly, where her success rate is phenomenal, earning a healthy stack of money, which she contributes to the down payment on their new home, telling her husband she got the money by selling the home in Kansas, but she keeps a secret stash behind a mirror, offering her a sense of independence, while Julius develops a crush for another man, Henry, played by Diego Calva from Damien Chazelle’s Babylon (2022), both working next to each other by night while having steamy sex during the day.  Muriel has a few secret flings of her own, both with women, meeting Gail (Katrina Cunningham) at the track, a sultry blonde, eventually finding she hangs out at the dingy Chester Hotel catering to a same sex clientele, introducing her to an undiscovered world where men dance with men and women with women, where she is informed, “We’re all just a hair’s breadth from losing everything, all the time,” while closer to home she runs into Sandra (Sasha Calle), who is part of a vibrant queer community, trying to keep her family farm operational on her own while a proposed highway is expected to cut through her land, something passed down from her Mexican heritage.  In each case, curiosity gets the best of them, yet the scenes are surprisingly tame, with no real nudity, only occasional flashes of skin, where the real problem lies with British actress Daisy Edgar-Jones, who generates no real erotic chemistry or heat, and is surprisingly bland in her personality, feeling overly naïve, with her ultra-repressed housewife resembling Anne Hathaway, where she just has difficulty carrying a picture.  Jacob Elordi, on the other hand, is a throwback to the personal magnetism of 50’s screen icons like James Dean or Montgomery Clift, where he and Henry exhibit passion right from the start and it never lets up, even when they’re no longer onscreen, as it carries over.  There’s a subtle jab at race differences, as both Muriel and Julius have it so much easier than the paths of Sandra and Henry because they’re white, easily forgiven for their many transgressions, as no one ever scrutinizes their behavior, with Sandra at one point expressing outrage at Muriel’s patronizing attitude, showing little regard for what others are subjected to, where this issue is more hinted at than elaborated with any degree of depth.  Instead the prevailing emotion is a melancholic anguish, as neither love nor the American Dream provide any real degree of satisfaction, where there’s a gaping hole missing that is left unfilled, taking great pains to explain what it was like being closeted in the 50’s, an era where repressed sexuality and queer relations go hand in hand, eloquently interweaving Southern California’s illicit gay joints, Mexico, and memories of Kansas, where the most poignant image is a Chester Hotel bulletin board for lost lovers who have missed their connections, leaving little personal notes attached, often with photos, in hopes they could find each other, which is how they maintained connections in the shadows, emblematic of how queer people always find each other, even in the most repressed environments, with Muriel finally discovering that the mystery Julius represents actually resides deep within her own restless soul.  The finale offers the allure of freedom, a possibility of a better future, but it’s etched in heartbreak and despair, where distance is real, whether emotionally or geographically, reflective of the extreme isolation queer people felt at the time, as each gets increasingly lonely and lost, beautifully encapsulated by the melancholic song written exclusively for the film playing over the end credits, Loren Kramar’s Song For Henry YouTube (4:15), where it’s hard to imagine this story ending any other way.