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by Jim Holman.
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TALK ABOUT MOVIES
May 2006
THE PRIZE WINNER OF DEFIANCE, OHIO
Directed by Jane Anderson. Starring Julianne Moore, Woody Harrelson. 2005, 99 minutes, Color, English, USA. Available at Blockbuster Video.
Matthew: There are just enough religious echoes in this film to make you wonder how much they excised from the story in trying to turn it into a tale of positive-thinking female empowerment in a difficult situation. The poem that Mom writes at the end clearly comes from a kind of pure and simple piety, but it's a piety we never see in the movie. She talks to a priest, but it's obvious that he lets her down when he puts the responsibility for the household troubles on her. She asks what her kids are doing when she finds them saying the rosary in the closet, as if she wouldn't know that they were praying for a solution to an impossible situation. The way she bears suffering and mortifies herself even when she is treated unjustly has a distinctly Catholic -- or at least Christian -- character. And yet we never see her pray. She receives unbelievable blessings, and yet she never thanks God.
Ernie: It's important to remember that the story was told through the eyes of her lesbian daughter. I suspect that she wrote nearly all the faith out of the story, but there are signs that it had to have been there. The kids would never think to pray the rosary, or know how, if there weren't faith in the home. Mom wouldn't have called the priest if she weren't a woman of faith. The daughter clearly has tremendous respect for her mother's strength in enduring many tough years, but doesn't seem to want to admit that faith played a part in it. She wants to ascribe it all to girl power.
Matthew: Her presentation of Dad is curious as well. Often, he seems just weak -- a failed man who kills the pain with drink, who can't ever get ahead, who is ashamed that his wife has to win contests to keep the family going. Even his rages have a kind of impotent character to them. He comes across as more pitiful than anything else. But then he does something that is flat-out mean, refusing to take Mom to the meeting, saying that his Saturdays are precious. It doesn't fit with the overall picture -- the pathetic guy who nevertheless loves his wife and kids.
Ernie: The whole presentation is immature. The author, who left Defiance at a young age, seems to have written the story as if she were still 18.