You could cinematically memorialize the life and works of Southern writer Flannery O’Connor in two ways, either by making a biographical drama or by adapting her work to the screen. Actor Ethan Hawke, however, directing a dramatic feature film for the fourth time, says, “Why not both?” and gives us a mélange of the two. Scenes from O’Connor’s stories alternate with scenes from her life—blending so thoroughly as the film proceeds that it is difficult to tell which is which. The approach does not always work—making for an uneven portrait. But it would be hard to dismiss Hawke’s new film “Wildcat” as a frivolous nepo-project. This is undoubtedly an actorly film but a serious one.
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Charges of nepotism might hover over the project due to the casting of Hawke’s daughter, Maya Hawke, in the lead role as O’Connor. However, the charge does not bear weight in this case because it was Maya Hawke who originated the project and brought it to her father to direct rather than the other way around. If anything, Ethan Hawke is more a nepo-dad here than his daughter is a nepo-baby. Their partnership is fruitful, and they deliver worthwhile work – at least some of the time.
We begin in the 1950s as O’Connor, in a quest to refine her craft, partakes in some writing workshops around the country before moving in with her mother, Regina (Laura Linney), in the Southern countryside. Along the way, she battles demons about her Catholic faith as well as questions about race and class in the racist South. She also suffers from a diagnosis of lupus that incapacitates her. The portrayal of a tortured artist might remind viewers of the superior Emily Dickinson biopic “A Quiet Passion” by Terence Davies. The Hawkes aren’t afraid to fully express O’Connor’s abrasiveness and prickliness, as well as her latent racism and spiritual hang-ups. This is no hagiography—it is at least an attempt to deal with an artist through the context that shaped them.
The biographical sections only have a couple of major recurring characters—O’Connor’s acquaintance, Duchess (Christine Dye), and O’Connor’s friend and poet, Pulitzer winner Robert “Cal” Lowell (Philip Ettinger). Hawke has been a well-regarded working actor for decades and manages to rope in several notable names for cameos. Alessandro Nivola shows up as one of O’Connor’s publishers for an arresting scene where she declines to humor his feedback on her book and declines to provide an outline either. Irish star Liam Neeson appears as a Southern priest to relieve O’Connor from some of her spiritual agonies, though, in a distracting “too cute” moment, he is asked about James Joyce. As any writer can attest, writing is a challenging exercise. Yet in ‘Wildcat’s portrayal, it is soul-shattering destructive self-abnegation – at one point, O’Connor compares writing to “giving birth to a piano — sideways.”
The cameos dominate the adaptation segments— which are generally much more rewarding than the biographical segments. Several stories are staged—smartly culled down to their most important moments. Included are “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” with Hawke’s son Levon Hawke, “Everything That Rises Must Converge,” “Revelation” with Mehmet Can Aksoy, “The Life You Save May Be Your Own” with Steve Zahn, “Good Country People” with Cooper Hoffman and “Parker’s Back” with Rafael Casal. These adaptations are well done enough to make you wish that Hawke had simply made an O’Connor anthology series instead—much like Wes Anderson has done with Roald Dahl in his “Henry Sugar” Netflix project. Or even an omnibus film—Anderson’s own “The French Dispatch” and Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s “Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy” have found success in recent years.
It isn’t a surprise so many actors signed on for small-ish roles in the story adaptations —it is a dream opportunity to slather on thick Southern accents and play lurid, grotesque characters—a staple in O’Connor’s fiction. Casal and Zahn do excellent work, but the real stand-out is Cooper Hoffman of “Licorice Pizza” fame. Hoffman is tremendous as a sleazy bible salesman and once again announces himself as a terrific new actor to watch with oodles of charisma—even in just 10 minutes of screentime. Levon Hawke appears for under a minute but makes an impression as the shredded, unhinged convict in the adaptation of O’Connor’s most famous story.
One of the movie’s conceits in mixing fact and fiction is to imply that O’Connor’s tales were significantly autobiographical, autofiction, or informed by what she saw, heard, and experienced. Consequently, almost every story casts Laura Linney and Maya Hawke in some mother-child capacity. The two actresses have a field day with the opportunity to play 6-7 characters in a single film and more or less successfully delineate all of them. Ettinger, appearing only in the biographical sections, is also very good as an intellectual foil and maybe-paramour for O’Connor.
“Wildcat” tries to do a lot, perhaps too much, in its melding of adaptations and biography, and the pacing suffers. Short stories have a tight, controlled gait, whereas biographies are more expansive, taking place over several years. The film, thus, has a splintered, stop-and-start feeling throughout. Even the degree to which Hawke draws associations between O’Connor’s real life and the writing process feels reductive. Biographical films about artists often discount the creative process by structuring their life as a series of light bulbs going off— spurring the artist to create their art. Only the artistic process is often protracted over years of consideration and isn’t as simplistic as creating a facsimile of the artist’s own life. Even so, “Wildcat” should provide interest to audiences that have read and enjoyed O’Connor’s work and might even spur new readers to seek her stories out. [B-]
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