The Glass CasTle
Brie Larson shows her wild side…
CERTIFICATE 12A DIRECTOR DESTIN DANIEL CRETTON STARRING BRIE LARSON, WOODY HARRELSON SCREENPLAY DESTIN DANIEL CRETTON, ANDREW LANHAM DISTRIBUTOR LIONSGATE RUNNING TIME 127 MINS
Room won Brie Larson her Oscar, catapulting her to Kong: Skull Island and Captain Marvel. But it was 2013 indie Short Term 12 that first turned heads: under Destin Daniel Cretton’s empathetic direction, Larson is terrific as a troubled counsellor of troubled teenagers.
Which makes this director-star reunion hugely exciting. A biopic of gossip columnist Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle seesaws between its subject’s dirt-poor upbringing (Ella Anderson plays the young Jeannette) at the hands of her free-spirit parents (Woody Harrelson, Naomi Watts) and her efforts to disown her off-the-grid childhood as she becomes a writer in ’80s New York. Not easy when your folks squat on the Lower East Side to keep tabs on your career…
If the flip-flopping structure feels a little writerly, it can be excused given its subject’s profession. Larson summons great emotion with one brush of her coiffure, while the fracturing of bonds between Walls and her larger-than-life father is played with ebb-and-flow complexity by Harrelson and Larson. The Glass Castle perhaps brings too much discipline to Walls’ messy life, but it makes for a compelling, adult-orientated drama, the likes of which are too seldom seen in today’s American mainstream cinema.
THE VERDICT
Well-acted, well-made and well-intentioned, but not quite strong enough to gain the awards traction it would desire.