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“The Glass Castle” is in a state of conflict with itself. Perhaps the apparent contradiction is deliberate. Given the emotionally charged terrain it traverses, it’s possible that it’s unavoidable. However, the end result is a film that never quite gels on a tonal level and fails to do justice to the film’s harrowing central narrative.
The film is based on Jeannette Walls’ best-selling memoir of the same name, which she wrote while working as a gossip columnist in New York. She writes about her childhood, which she describes as one of poverty, uncertainty, and neglect. In her early childhood, Jeannette was one of four children raised by an abusive, alcoholic father and a self-centered artist mother. She had to learn to fend for herself as well as to care for her sisters and brother, despite the fact that they were frequently relocated from place to place, kept out of school, and frequently left hungry for days at a time.
During the course of the film, director and co-writer Destin Daniel Cretton switches between Jeannette’s childhood and adolescence and her adulthood in 1989, when she had seemingly found stability with a job as a New York magazine writer and a relationship with a successful investment banker. Although it appears to work at times, the back-and-forth structure is never truly effective: it feels episodic rather than building momentum toward the intended moments of truth.
Jeannette (a mature and soulful Ella Anderson) is better fleshed-out as the family’s feisty, fearless voice of reason in “The Glass Castle,” which is why the film’s flashbacks are more compelling. And this is surprising given the fact that Brie Larson portrays her as a grown woman. Larson reunites with Cretton, whose 2013 indie gem “Short Term 12” was one of the films that established her as a leading lady in Hollywood. However, Jeannette’s portrayal in her mid-20s makes her appear strangely inert; she’s a passenger in her own story, often acting at the whims of others.
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“The Glass Castle,” like the film “Short Term 12,” which is set in a foster-care center for at-risk teens, does not shy away from the horrors that its young characters must endure in order to survive. The frankness with which Cretton approaches the situation serves him well once more. While working from a script that he co-wrote with actor Andrew Lanham, he wisely avoids exaggerating the violence and squalor that Jeannette and her siblings endured in their home.
However, the portrayal of patriarch Rex Walls continues to raise eyebrows. Especially when it comes to the character’s dangerous instincts and drunken rages, Woody Harrelson can be downright terrifying in the role. He appears to be aware that this individual was a monster. In addition, the author of “The Glass Castle” wants us to think he’s exciting in his unconventional parenting approach and to find his antics amusing. Rose Mary, Rex’s wife, is a flighty and playful character who once became engrossed in her painting that she failed to notice Jeannette severely burning herself while cooking hot dogs on the stove. Naomi Watts’ performance as Rose Mary is equally as charming as her husband’s.
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In explaining why she was drawn to an unusually shaped tree in the desert during one of the family’s many stops (and spelling out the film’s central theme), Rose Mary says to Jeannette, “It’s the struggle that gives it its beauty.”
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Perhaps Jeannette’s parents were all of these things to her and her siblings, as well as a slew of other characteristics (played as adults by Sarah Snook, Josh Caras and Brigette Lundy-Paine). In spite of the film’s numerous startling sequences, the end result is a film that feels surprisingly safe when taken in its entirety.
Almost all of these events take place in Welch, West Virginia, Rex’s impoverished hometown, which he reluctantly returns to only after the family has gone bankrupt. His ultimate goal is to construct the glass castle that serves as the story’s title: a magnificent, solar-powered structure that he has been dreaming about for many years. That is, without a doubt, not going to happen. However, significant events do take place there, including the quietly powerful moment when Jeannette asks him to stop drinking—by lantern light, because the family cannot afford electricity in their run-down shack—because the family cannot afford electricity.
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As we can see from the 1989 sections, any sobriety Rex achieves does not last for long. Max Greenfield portrays Jeannette, who is trying to maintain a polished façade alongside her stable and supportive (yet slightly boring) fiancé, who continues to get drunk and embarrass Jeannette. Larson eventually allows the cracks to show—and the pent-up emotion to be released—in a couple of stirring outbursts that serve as the highlights of an otherwise understated performance that is otherwise flawless.
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Indeed, forgiveness and redemption are admirable—and possible—after having experienced such a difficult upbringing. They’re also deserving and inspiring themes for filmmaking. However, “The Glass Castle” manages to tie up all of the ugliness with a neat bow that doesn’t quite fit the bill.
For more personality quizzes check this: The Zookeepers Wife Quiz.
