The thing that needs to be understood about Shirley is that it is not a biopic. It is based on a novel by Susan Scarf Merrell, positing a fictional story set against a distinctly non-fictional context about Shirley Jackson and the writing of her 1951 novel Hangsaman; set at her home in North Bennington, Vermont, while depicting her tumultuous relationship with her controlling academic husband Stanley Hyman, a critic and professor at the local college. However the core of the story concerns their relationship with a young couple who move into their house, and how these visitors, but the woman especially, become entwined in an obsessive and manipulative process of inspiration that drives Shirley’s book. This has no basis in truth, which makes it quite appropriate that the movie would frequently blur the lines of its own reality. Much like a Shirley Jackson story would.
Indeed the brilliance of Shirley, stupendously directed by Josephine Decker, is that it brings Shirley Jackson to life as a Shirley Jackson story. I have seen few films, few adaptations even, that can replicate the experience of reading a text so distinctly. And I’m not talking about the book Shirley, which I haven’t read, but the prose of Jackson herself for a story she didn’t write. True there are plenty of elements, either in plot or style, clearly borrowed from her work -most notably Hangsaman itself, but also We Have Always Lived in the Castle, various short stories (a form I would argue she perfected), and even The Haunting of Hill House. The underlying darkness and entrancing atmosphere of her work is profoundly realized. And it presents Shirley, played by Elisabeth Moss, as a character she might have written, extrapolating off of her real distinct personality and anxieties -and though film Shirley does some awful things, it’s never libellous. The film has a deep sympathy and respect for Shirley Jackson and that shows through.
But most thrilling is the films’ dedication to a couple of Jacksons’ favourite themes: obsession and madness. They have their in-text roles of course. The writing of Shirley’s book is prompted by the disappearance of a student from the college whom she gradually becomes fixated with. It is in the enterprise of research on this project that she recruits her young house-guest Rosie (Odessa Young) to help her find records and books that the reclusive author cannot herself obtain. A mutual obsession with this story and with each other develops, and out of it, aided by other machinations and manipulations largely inferred, that same tenuous grip on sanity that has plagued so many Jackson characters from Natalie Waite to Eleanor Vance, Merricat Blackwood to Mr. Beresford. What escalates these tendencies however is how the film itself incorporates them. The atmosphere is tense and hypnotic, the pacing even more so. Much of the cinematography is hand-held, unconventional for a typical “biopic”, many scenes are shot with a subjective claustrophobia -intimating a danger where none should be, and continuity editing is deliberately inconsistent to set you off. Glimpses of surreality dot the film too, striking imagery that is dreamlike and disturbing, such as Shirley at her writers’ desk in the middle of the woods, or a bloodied Paula (the vanished girl, whom Shirley conflates with Rosie) shuffling through a desolate corridor.
Ambiguity is key to all of these, and though a foundational reality is often ascertained, perspective is regularly thrown into question. Rosie is as significant a part of the film as Shirley, and much of the story seems to unfold from her point-of-view -though even that could be interpretive. Because of this, we’re left unsure how hostile Shirley is really being towards Rosie or vice versa, though we do know both women are to some degree under the thumb of their partners. Rosie hasn’t any real prospects of her own as her husband Fred (Logan Lerman) pursues his teaching career, and Stanley (Michael Stuhlbarg) maintains a smug intellectual superiority and constraining influence as he sexually harasses Rosie under his and Shirley’s not wholly consensual open relationship. It’s a big part of what drives Shirley and Rosie together; a societal, intellectual, sexual repression that enigmatically compels, even attracts them to one another, but without entirely an overarching trust either between them or with the audience, at times putting me in mind of films like Persona.
The performances here concerned are quite enticing. Elisabeth Moss may not look much like Jackson (though a valiant effort is certainly made in her poise and expressiveness), but she succeeds in large part off of how well she and Sarah Gubbins’ script capture the voice of the author. As fictitious as much of the plot is, she is an authentic realization of Shirley Jackson, playing the severe isolationism and personal insecurity of the literary giant just as well as her transgressive attitude and dark humour. The more revelatory though, is Odessa Young as the woman Shirley sweeps away, whom we first meet being sexually aroused by “The Lottery”. Young is stupendous as she plays with Rosie’s compulsive curiosity turned dependence and dark intrigue, and is a perfect Jackson heroine as she slowly succumbs to whatever spell Shirley casts her under. I’d also be remiss not to applaud the ever underrated Stuhlbarg, who once again offers a stunningly charismatic yet insidious take on a character who would not make much of an impression in the hands of a lesser actor.
For as much as I’ve addressed, there’s plenty of ideas and commentaries and psychological points of interest I’m leaving out. There are complex and fascinating layers to Shirley, as there were to Jackson, as there are to each of her novels and stories. Though the movie should not be taken as fact, it does understand Shirley Jackson, and penetrates to the root of why her work is as resonant as it is. Clearly I’m a bit biased, I’ve been a fan for years; but trust me when I say that Josephine Decker, who has certainly proven herself a sharp and singular new creative filmmaker, has made not only a worthy tribute to one of America’s great writers, but a truly transfixing psychological thriller of a kind rare to see in the contemporary American cinema.
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