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| Director Olivia Newman |
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| Producer Reese Witherspoon with lead cast |
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| cinematographer Polly Morgan with Daisy Edgar-Jones |
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| Mark and Delia Owens |
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| Author Delia Owens |
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| Delia Owens |
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| 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.
