Spinning in the parent trap
The Glass Castle offers a look into the life of a dysfunctional family
It’s fashionable these days to joke that “dysfunctional” should be part of the definition of “family,” but clearly some clans are more faulty than others.
Take writer Jeannette Walls, whose 2005 memoir forms the rough foundation of The Glass Castle. She grew up in Arizona (and in California, Nevada and West Virginia), where her parents were forever running from debt collectors, while the children — three girls and a boy — learned through trial and error to feed and fend for themselves. Their parents had some skills, but parenting was not one of them.
As adapted by Andrew Lanham and director Destin Daniel Cretton (they also worked on The Shack, which turned out better than expected), The Glass Castle bounces between 1989, when a grown-up Jeannette (Brie Larson) is working in New York and engaged to be married, and the mid-1970s as young Jeannette (Chandler Head giving way to Ella Anderson) tries to make sense of her father’s bizarre, alcohol-fuelled mix of charm and self-destructive behaviour.
The parents are superbly played by Naomi Watts and Woody Harrelson, whose chemistry is just about perfect. Watts disappears into the role of Rose Mary Walls, who was happy if she could be left alone to paint, and deferred to her husband, Rex, not out of fear but more a combination of lack of willpower and shared philosophy of life. Harrelson barrels through the movie as a flawed but weirdly likable character, with an answer for everything, plus a quick right jab reserved for non-family members.
A former Air Force pilot and not unintelligent, Rex at one point consoles a very young Jeannette, who has just burned herself while cooking. He starts with a description of fire, how the edges of the flame are a zone of instability where anything can happen, and then explains: “You just got a little too close to the chaos.”
By the end of their chat, she’s ready to wear the scars on her skin proudly, as a sign of the fire in her belly. And she’s half-convinced that chaos is a trait to be treasured.
The film expertly cuts between the two time periods, with perhaps a touch too much soft focus in the ’70s scenes (if you notice it, it’s not working) but some marvellous period details — like a baby-blue metal Coleman cooler — and some clever thematic echoes: After a flashback to that cooking-fire incident, adult Jeannette walks through a Manhattan restaurant where a chef is working a flaming wok.
The Glass Castle is also one of those movies that pays attention to the little things, like the funeral scene where Jeannette’s uncle isn’t shaking anyone’s hands as they enter. Not sure why, but it made him more than just a disposable third-tier relative.
It all adds up to a nuanced and emotional tale, anchored by equally fine performances by Larson and Anderson. The younger actress, only 12 years old, pulls off the tightrope-walk of filial affection and a growing unease at her parents’ behaviour.
The Glass Castle feels a bit like the recent artist biopic Maudie, if the painter had four kids and never found fame. There’s also something of Viggo Mortensen’s character from Captain Fantastic in the iconoclastic dreamer Rex, but with the added frisson of knowing that many of the details are drawn from life rather than a screenwriter’s imagination. And while few viewers will have faced the depths of poverty and uncertainty that Walls did in her youth, most will appreciate that a line such as “you’re a lot like your father” can be, depending on the speaker and the circumstance, the cruelest rebuke, or the most shining truth.