Director Report Card: Destin Daniel Cretton (2017)

4. The Glass Castle

In 2004, “The Glass Castle” by Jeanette Walls was published. A memoir, the book would tell the story of Walls' childhood with her eccentric parents, growing up in poverty, and the eventual path she took to becoming a successful writer and columnist. It's the kind of inspirational story that immediately attracts attention and the book soon became a best-seller. A film adaptation seemed inevitable and, sure enough, Liongates acquired the movie rights in 2012. Initially, Jennifer Lawrence was attached to star with Destin Daniel Cretton coming on as director shortly afterwards. When Lawrence exited the project, Cretton brought on his “Short Term 12” leading lady, Brie Larson, to step into the lead role.  It was certainly the highest profile project for the director up to this point. 

In 1986, Jeanette Wells is living in Manhattan, writing the gossip column for New York magazine, and engaged to an up-and-coming accountant. That is when she sees her parents, Rex and Rose, living on the street and going through dumpsters. This causes her to reflect on her childhood. It was a largely transient experience, her irresponsible painter mother and an eccentric alcoholic father keeping them on the road most of the time. When finally settling down in poverty in West Virginia, the flaws of Jeanette's father became more apparent. Now as an adult, she attempts to patch up the relationship with her father while still carrying the literal and metaphorical wounds from her childhood.

One can only speculate but this is why I feel Destin Daniel Cretton decided to direct “The Glass Castle.” “Short Term 12” received critical praise and scooped up awards all over without managing to garner any Academy Award nominations. If one was to think cynically, you could accuse “The Glass Castle” as being blatant Oscar bait. Like a lot of medium budget dramas, it concerns a brood of quirky outsiders traveling the country. Scenes involving an arm-wrestling match leading towards a fist fight or an inspiration message delivered around a camp fire seem like something out of a “Little Miss Sunshine” wannabe. I mean, the movie was even suppose to star Jennifer Lawrence right on the heels of “Joy.”

“The Glass Castle's” pretensions towards being a touching and inspirational true life story designed to make critics cheer and audiences feel warm is most apparent in several big dramatic speeches. When Jeanette has finally had it up to here with her parents' nonsense, she chews them out at a big social gathering in front of everyone. At the film's emotional climax, when Rex is nearing the end of his life, he tries to sum up everything he's taught his daughter in one paragraph of words. In both moments, the music swells. The actors strain, their faces contorting as they try to sell the emotion. They feel like prefabricated Oscar clips and are overwrought, to say the least.

While you can accuse “The Glass Castle” of being many things, I don't think it meets the criteria for one oft-touted criticism of Oscar-bait-y stories like this: It's not “poverty porn.” When the Walls family returns to Rex's childhood home town of Welch, West Virginia, they live in a ramshackle house in the middle of nowhere. The home is without electricity or running water, the kids often forced to sneak into town to use public showers. This is actually an improvement for the children, who previously lived out of a car. As someone who has lived in West Virginian towns not too dissimilar to Welch, I can say that this is a pretty accurate depiction of life under the poverty line. Moreover, “The Glass Castle” never depicts any folksy wisdom or whimsical joy arising out of the family's undesirable living condition. Living like this is hard and this movie is, at least, honest about that. “Hillbilly Elegy” this ain't. 

Even if “The Glass Castle” is blatant Oscar bait, you also can't deny something else: It's definitely a Destin Daniel Cretton movie. The movie clearly continues the themes and ideas the director is interested in. Namely, the relationship between parents and their children... Especially abusive parents and their children. Rex is not a good dad. While drunk and at a public swimming pool, he nearly drowns Jeanette in a misguided attempt to teach her how to swim. When trying to detox, he screams and yells at her. Yet Rex's behavior was not born in a vacuum. When visiting his mother's home, we see a cruel and domineering woman who violently enforces her will on anyone around her. Later, the siblings seemingly discovers their grandmother sexually abusing one of their brothers. Parental abuse reverberates through time, abuse begetting damaged adults that beget yet more damaged adults. 

Yet this does not represent the director's only interest in family. Jeanette is not alone in her complicated relationship with her father. Her brothers and sisters are watching out for her. When they see the youngest brother possibly being abused by their grandmother, every one of them rush in to save him. When Jeanette and the others are trying to assert her independence and get away from home, the siblings also support each other. They save money in secret places and create distractions while people escape. Even into adulthood, they share a special bond, forged by each of them having to survive through a crazy childhood.

“The Glass Castle” is also interesting for the way it depicts how our perception of our parents change as we grow older. As a child, Jeanette is charmed by her father's eccentric behavior. He regales her with stories of the title-lending castle made of glass he plans to build some day. He tells fables and tall tales about wolves and informs his daughter how special their family is. Yet, as she grows up, she sees that this behavior disguises a selfish personality that wrecks havoc and expects to be forgiven on account of how “wise” and “special” he is. That he's never going to change because he believes that shitty actions like these are always forgiven. It's a journey every kid goes through, of learning that their parent isn't perfect and is fallible.... But it's a journey the children of abusive parents especially undergo, realizing their dad is actually a massive asshole. 

Which makes “The Glass Castle's” last act all the more disappointing. After detailing so clearly that Rex is actually a piece of shit and that Jeanette is totally right to distance herself from him, the movie makes a baffling shift. As their father grows ill, Jeanette forgives him for his mistakes. Her and her siblings look back on their dad's shenanigans, stories, and beliefs with fondness and nostalgia. It's certainly possible for a child to try and find a compromise, between the attributes of a parent that they admire and the ways they fucked them up. Yet the way “The Glass Castle” changes so suddenly, from depicting Rex Walls as a giant jerk to a quirky mentor worthy of respect gives the audience whiplash. It feels like a bullshit attempt to end a fundamentally downbeat movie on a happy note.

In fact, you can see this strange divide in the movie's themes in its visual design too. Cretton discards the shaky documentary visuals of his previous films for something far sleeker here. The 1986 sequence are often shot in close-ups. The apartment Jeanette shares with her fiancé, and the cow-print designer chair they own, is brightly lit. In contrast, the flashbacks to Jeanette's youth – basically the worst times of her life – are filmed in warm colors and wide angles. When Jeanette's opinion on her dad begins to shift back to her childhood fondness, that glowing, autumnal warmth returns to the present scenes. The movie is doing everything it can to trick you into buying its messy tonal shift but it still doesn't work.

As a glossy, would-be Oscar flick, “The Glass Castle” certainly has a stacked cast. It's really easy to see Jennifer Lawrence playing the adult Jeanette. But Brie Larson is almost definitely better in the role than the increasingly one-note Lawrence would ever be. No, Larson is not so strong an actress to add any genuine feeling to the overwrought speeches. But Brie's humor and intensity goes a long way. A moment where an asshole in a bar attempts to seduce her is perfectly defused by Jeanette slowly revealing horrific scars from the childhood burning that occur near the movie's beginning. It's among the movie's best moments and that's largely thanks to Larson, an actress adapt at mixing vulnerability and attitude.

The film isn't just an Oscar vehicle for Larson. In fact, Woody Harrelson in the role of a troubled but brilliant father figure seems designed to win over Academy voters. This is the kind of part that certainly caters to Harrelson's eccentric strengths. He can't overcome the hacky melodrama of the script either but he still manages to find some humor – during that arm wrestling scene – and pathos – when Rex is at his drunkard lows – to the role. Naomi Watts is given less to do as Jeanette's equally brilliant but inconsiderate mother. She nails the selfish whims of the character but isn't given much of a chance to flesh the role out. It's also neat to see up-and-comers like Sadie Sink – as the teenage version of Jeanette's older sister – and Bridgette Lundy-Paine as the adult version of the youngest sister. Both clearly display some chemistry, even if these are just supporting roles.

No matter how much “The Glass Castle” clearly wanted to attract attention from Academy voters (Like most based-on-a-true-story inspirational flicks like this, it ends with footage of the real life people who inspired the performances in the movie), it was not to be. The movie received mixed reviews from critics, many of them having the exact same problem with the movie's ending that I do. The film picked up a few nominations at some minor festivals but that's about it. People tell me the book is a lot better than the movie and doesn't simplify its themes quite so much. I was enjoying the movie a fair amount up until the last third, where all its positive attributes are not enough to overcome a truly baffling scripting choice. [Grade: C+]