Wildcat

Southern Gothic writer Flannery O'Connor (Maya Hawke, “Asteroid City”) was torn between her Catholic faith and her cynical worldview, editor John Selby (Alessandro Nivola, "The Many Saints of Newark"), upon reading her first novel, accusing her of trying to pick a fight with her readers.  ‘Wise Blood,’ self described as about an atheist who marries a prostitute and preaches anti-religion, was a biting work from a literary voice exercising demons in “Wildcat.”

Laura's Review: B-

Cowriter (with Shelby Gaines who composed the score with brother Latham)/director Ethan Hawke ("Blaze"), whose films have largely revolved around musicians, takes on another art form inspired by his daughter’s use of O’Connor’s ‘Prayer Journal’ as her audition piece for Julliard.  Weaving Flannery’s own inner conflicts with the stories she wrote outwardly expressing them, Hawkes casts his daughter and Laura Linney as Flannery’s mother Regina not only as their opposing selves but multiple characters in O’Connor’s stories, a device which will mostly work for those already familiar with O’Connor’s work.  Even with only a glancing knowledge (admittedly, my only exposure to O’Connor was in John Huston’s adaptation of “Wise Blood”), Hawkes’ film draws us in for a goodly part of its running time, but goes on long past what seems its natural climax.

Opening with a fictional b&w trailer for an exploitation movie called “Star Drake” based on O’Connor’s short story ‘The Comforts of Home,’ Hawkes suggests the reception her work must have drawn in its day (‘She’s an atheist!’ ‘She’s a nymphomaniac! scream the taglines), before cinematographer Steve Cosens (“Blaze”) changes his frame to widescreen, giving us a view, now in color, from behind a windshield.  Outside the car, a long-haired, tattooed man waves a gun, leans into the window and addresses someone in the back seat with ‘the world was made for the dead’ before aiming that gun directly at us.  A quick cut reveals Flannery jolting back from her typewriter, reacting to her own words.  This is one intriguing opening.

After a 1950 jaunt to New York City where O’Connor chafes against Selby’s advice and Robert 'Cal' Lowell’s (Philip Ettinger, "First Reformed," "Manodrome") backpedaling from a romantic declaration, she heads home to Georgia feeling ill.  Before she arrives, Hawkes introduces her mother Regina first as ‘The Life You Save May Be Your Own’s’ Mrs. Crater, who manipulates one-armed drifter Tom T. Shiflet (Steve Zahn) into marrying her deaf-mute daughter (Hawke), a story the writers imply was inspired by a one-armed man Flannery saw in the NYC station.   

From this point on, Hawke shifts among Flannery’s relationship with Regina, the inspiration of many stories about judgmental, racist Southern ‘ladies’ Linney has a ball portraying, with flashbacks to the Iowa’s Writers Workshop and the New York artists’ community Yaddo, where we see the Southerner defend her faith against New York intellectuals.  The author is greeted at the station by her mother and Regina’s friend Duchess (Christine Dye, "Challengers") with their hopes she will be the next Margaret Mitchell, a greeting one can sense should send the writer screaming.  But Flannery is quickly diagnosed with lupus, the disease that took her father, and is confined to her mother’s home for the next twelve years until her death at 39, a period when her writing flourished.

With black slashes of eyebrow fighting for dominance behind browline nerd glasses, Maya Hawke looks the part, convincing as both the iconoclastic writer and the half dozen O’Connor characters she plays.  But Ethan Hawke has weighted the film in favor of O’Connor’s stories, leaving their writer still something of a mystery.  While we can fathom the basis of her own racism and struggles against it along with the quandaries her own faith proposed, we are left wondering about all the grotesqueries inherent in her tales, as well as her own personal yearnings.  Steve Cosens’ use of shallow focus keeps those characters front and center, his desaturated palette suggesting a life drained of vitality.  Shelby and Latham Gaines’ score features slapping percussion and twangy guitar.  Watch for an interesting cast, “Licorice Pizza’s” Cooper Hoffman portraying fictional Bible salesman Manley Pointer, “Blindspotting’s” Rafael Casal as Obadiah Elihue Parker, Vincent D’Onofrio appearing in that opening trailer and Willa Fitzgerald (“18 ½”) as Flannery’s real life romantic rival, poet Elizabeth Hardwick.  Liam Neeson appears for a revelatory scene as Flannery’s priest, Father Flynn.

“Wildcat” may be flawed, but if the Hawkes’ goal was to engage the public with Flannery O’Connor’s writing, they succeeded.

Robin's Review: C

Oscilloscope Laboratories opened "Wildcat" in NY on 5/3/24, expanding in subsequent weeks.  Click here for play dates.