This is the way the
world ends, this is the way the world ends.
T.S. Eliot, The Hollow
Men, 1925, Poetry X » Poetry
Archives » T. S. Eliot » "The Hollow Men"
This may not be one of the best directed films, playing it
fairly straight, allowing the actors to control their own destinies, but it is
one of the best written Tracy Letts plays, where you get your money’s worth
with this winner of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for drama, a modern generation
follow up to Eugene O’Neill’s posthumously received Pulitzer Prize winning play
Long Day’s Journey Into Night,
written in 1941-42, but not published until 1956, one of his most
autobiographical, downbeat, and searingly intense plays adapted into film in
1962 by Sidney Lumet, an unforgettable work that all but obliterates the
American Dream. Tracy Letts takes the
original premise of a dysfunctional family, with the matriarch, in this case
Meryl Streep, lost to the mad ravings of drug addiction and a lifetime of hard
times and disappointment, set nearly half a century later, and there’s nothing
even remotely close to a dream seen anywhere in this picture. In fact, Letts writes his play around themes
originated in T.S. Eliot’s 1925 poem The
Hollow Men, which not only includes “eyes I dare not meet in dreams,” instead
belonging to the arid desert of the dead, but then bookends his play to various
passages from the poem, beginning with “Here we go round the prickly pear,
prickly pear, prickly pear,” a parody of a children’s jump rope song that
substitutes a desert prickly cactus for a “mulberry bush.” Set in the hottest summer month of a flat and
empty prairie landscape in Oklahoma, this is the family home of Beverly (Sam
Shepard) and Violet (Meryl Streep), where Violet takes handfuls of pills to
eradicate the pain from mouth cancer while Beverly, in his late 60’s, has been
an alcoholic for over 50 years. Beverly
is seen hiring a live-in Native American housekeeper, Johnna (Misty Upham), and
even hands her a book of T.S. Eliot poems in gratitude, a prelude for plumbing
the depths of what’s to come. After
repeating the children’s song to himself, Beverly disappears, something he’s
apparently done before, but due to Violet’s illness, this time she needs the
family’s help, so like the cavalry, family starts arriving at her doorstep.
First to arrive is Aunt Mattie Fae (Margo Martindale),
Violet’s sister, and Uncle Charlie (Chris Cooper), followed by the youngest
daughter who lives locally, Ivy (Julia Nicholson), and two other daughters that
lead separate lives, escaping to distant states, Barbara, Julia Roberts, best
she’s been since Mike Nichols’ CLOSER (2004), living in Colorado, separated
from her husband Ewan McGregor and 14-year old daughter (Abigail Breslin), but
arriving together in a united front along with the sexually fickle Karen
(Juliette Lewis) from Florida, who has a young man with a red convertible
sports car in tow (Dermot Mulroney), claiming he’s her fiancé. Barbara immediately gets into verbal sparring
matches with her mother, much of which is played for biting black comedy, where
the audience is initially thrilled with the cast and is hanging on every line,
but the mood turns darker and more somber when Beverly is discovered drowned,
perhaps taking his own life, leaving the family in a state of turmoil. Meryl Streep literally takes over the film at
this point, with an accent that sounds just like Cher, but at the family dinner
following the funeral she’s so over the top that she verges into Bette Davis
and Joan Crawford territory in the gothic horror thriller WHATEVER HAPPENED TO
BABY JANE? (1962). While Violet shows a
mean streak towards everyone sitting at the table, she expresses her
scorn and bitterness one after the other, literally altering the landscape, as
whatever sympathy may have been developing for her sickly character quickly
dissipates with her venomous language, becoming a choreography of incessant
attack mode, eventually met with fierce resistance by Barbara who starts
fighting back, calling her a drug addict, and physically attacks her, going
after her pill bottles, leading to sheer pandemonium and mayhem. Screaming that she’s taking over now, Julia
Roberts, America’s sweetheart, has never been seen uttering such physically
aggressive, foul-laden profanity, where it’s literally a battle of wills, as
Barbara orders a search of the house for all the hiding places and flushes the
considerable stash of pills down the toilet.
After going for each other’s throats, the mood quiets down for some quiet
family dialogue, where Violet opens up about what a viciously cruel mother she
had.
There is little doubt that this is one of Streep’s great legendary
performances, stealing almost every scene in the film, but it’s also one of the
most vile characters she’s ever played, where many in the audience are left
aghast at her despicable foul-mouthed behavior.
She roars and bellows and bullies her way through every moment of the
film as she relentlessly goes for the juggler, exposing the hidden weaknesses
and vulnerabilities of the entire family, showing her contemptuous disgust with
them all, claiming she went through hard times so they could lead relatively comfortable
lives, but have they forgotten what she and her husband sacrificed and went
through for them? Did they even know the
dire circumstances of their parent's youth, where in one poignant moment she reminds
them of the worst Christmas she ever had, which is a decrepitly sorry excuse
for a Christmas memory, yet this is what comes to mind when they’re all
gathered around her. It’s cringe worthy
stuff, where painful truth is a piercing dagger stained in shared blood,
becoming a bloodbath of revelations, but also meticulously drawn out feelings
leftover from the Great Depression, which had a way of terrifying people, many
losing their minds, but Violet was resolute that nothing and nobody was going
to get the better of her, becoming an indomitable force of nature, like a
hurricane or a blizzard, where no one was going to penetrate into her female
psyche. She’s a master manipulator at
evoking sympathy or drawing attention, but everyone can see it’s all an
exaggerated, often pathetic performance, yet there’s something indescribably
delicious at watching a scene-stealer of this magnitude perform at this level
of dubious moral ground, as behind the façade of sickly cancer patient is a shrewd
old lady, perhaps with a greedy streak, who knows how to protect herself first
and foremost and will walk over anybody who stands in her way. She’s a Queen
Lear type character, an über matriarch ripping at the spiteful nature of
her ungrateful daughters, feeling like something out of a Jane Smiley novel,
where life on the empty flatlands of America’s heartland is an arduous job,
where each hundred degree day offers little comfort and no relief whatsoever,
eventually becoming an endurance test. While
this film carves out the emotional extremes, every family has contentious
moments like these, literally a lifetime of uncomfortable moments, where the
last place you want to be is confronting a family elder or sibling, yet there
you are screaming your fool head off, demanding a single moment’s worth of
respect, yet you’re left utterly annihilated by the sheer force of exasperation
and disgust, both at yourself and the undignified world you’re forced to live
in.
