The Glass Castle (2017)

Based on a memoir, The Glass Castle film is a bit of a disjointed narrative which oscillates between somewhat horrific dysfunctional family drama and what I believe was meant to be healing. The film's overarching story about finding forgiveness for those you love who hurt you, mostly feels contrived as the film never gets us to a place where we can feel the honesty of that forgiveness. Instead, after scene after scene of abuse and neglect, we are to just accept Larson's tightly wound character's arc but are never given enough to truly believe it.

Larson (teaming up again with her Short Term 12 director, Destin Daniel Cretton) plays a grown up Jeanette who has escaped a life of poverty and abuse thrust upon her by her counter-culture, alcoholic, abusive father (Woody Harrelson) and her enabling artist mother (Naomi Watts). She is now living a successful life in 1980s NYC with all the trappings that come with it, the expensive apartment, handsome stock broker husband, shoulder pads, and big hair. She spends the whole film pursing her lips and clutching her pearls so we know that she really isn't happy.

We flash back through her unconventional upbringing and see her dad act out numerous times, interlaced with some poignant moments where we are supposed to see he truly loves her under all that gas-lighting. The film never finds an equilibrium between the manic extremes to make us see any semblance of possibility. But when the film has run two hours it needs us to get some resolution. Suddenly dad is dying, suddenly she remembers happy memories to show us, hey he's not such a bad guy, and suddenly she has left her marriage which the film never once establishes as anything other than stable and satisfying.

So the film careens towards its inevitable conclusion and we're all supposed to feel that sort of relief that it can all work out in the end and we can find peace and forgiveness despite the trauma. But the film just doesn't do the work to earn that. It never gets us to a place where we can feel that redemption. So it's as forced as Larson's hyper-hairsprayed coif and about as realistic.

The Glass Castle
Starring: Brie Larson, Woody Harrelseon, Naomi Watts
Director: Destin Daniel Cretton
Writers: Destin Daniel Cretton, Andrew Lanham, Marti Noxon