Kentish Express Ashford & District - What's On
Family drama unlikely to be a smash hit
OUT THIS WEEK... THE GLASS CASTLE (12A)
Self-destructive bohemian parents nurture their children with cruelty and cold comfort in The Glass Castle. Adapted from Jeannette Walls’ bestselling memoir of the same title, director Destin Daniel Cretton’s tonally uneven picture asks us to believe that formative years marked by abandonment and rejection could inspire four siblings to discover the inner strength and resilience that will stand them in good stead for the future. It’s a harsh lesson in selfpreservation, delivered with gusto by an impressive ensemble cast led by Oscar winner Brie Larson.
The script, co-written by Cretton, Andrew Lanham and Marti Noxon, awkwardly juxtaposes scenes of tenderness and neglect, begging us to empathise with characters whose behaviour would – in another time and place – have demanded intervention from social services. Journalist Jeannette Walls (Larson) bears her wounds with stoicism, as she celebrates her engagement to nice guy David (Max Greenfield).
She eventually breaks the happy news to her father Rex (Woody Harrelson) and mother Rose Mary (Naomi Watts), who raised Jeanette and her three siblings in poverty and chaos. Their refusal to share her newfound joy catalyses a series of anguished flashbacks that illuminate the destruction wrought by Rex and Rose Mary, like when the very young Jeanette (Chandler Head) sets her dress alight on the kitchen stove because her mother is too preoccupied to cook lunch. Rex sneaks his badly burned daughter out of hospital and flees into the desert with his rag tag brood.
Despite her horrific injuries, Jeanette remains devoted to the patriarch.
As she grows, Jeanette (now played by Ella Anderson), clings onto Rex’s fanciful dreams until she can delude herself no longer.
The Glass Castle threatens to shatter before the end of a plodding two hours but the cast provide sufficient glue to hold Cretton’s picture together.
The Glass Castle (12A) is out in cinemas on Friday, October 6