Where the Crawdads Sing is that kind of Southern poetic title that immediately evokes To Kill a Mockingbird -a piece of some phrase of local wisdom that on its’ own is suggestive of some meaningful morality or philosophy. And indeed the classic Harper Lee novel is clearly a pretty big influence on Delia Owens’ 2018 bestseller. Like that story this one centres on a peculiar girl in a small town community in the American south during the segregation era, who’s known mostly by a colloquial nickname, and much of the story is based around a major court case that is brought forth more on prejudice and discrimination than any burden of evidence. The film even seems to replicate the iconic courtroom architecture of the 1962 adaptation, with noble lawyer David Strathairn even dressed at one point in Atticus Finch’s white three-piece suit. The only substantive difference is that Tom Robinson is a white girl.
That might not be a terribly fair statement. I haven’t read the book personally and more of the movie’s triteness in plot and characters come from elements of other books or tropes than the one that essentially gave birth to the subgenre of Southern drama. But either way, the long-awaited movie version of Where the Crawdads Sing, directed by Olivia Newman from a script by Lucy Alibar, is a largely dull and derivative affair that fails to capture anything unique or inspiring about the book, if such things are indeed to be found there in the first place.
It deals in the misfortunate life and relationships of Catherine “Kya” Clark (Daisy Edgar-Jones), a much maligned and gossiped about recluse living in a hut on the North Carolina marsh in the town of Barkley Cove -who in the story’s present is the prime suspect in the death of local golden boy Chase Andrews (Harris Dickinson). Framed within her trial, the story is told predominantly through flashback of her traumatic childhood and turbulent adolescence.
Much of it is a fest of clichés around abandonment, abuse and discrimination, pasted from other stories and stereotypes of poverty in that era and region. None of it is depicted with much specificity or nuance –it right away gets into very broad illustrations of domestic violence with Garrett Dillahunt’s drunken irate father accosting and driving out every member of the family in turn starting with the mother –only Kya stays. Little reason is given for this, the movie seemingly going for a kind of resiliency in her character or otherwise simple love of her world. But it’s all so empty this hardly resonates.
Once she is a teenager the focus shifts almost wholly to her romances as it tries to have it both ways of her being a local pariah, marginalized by everybody but the friendly black couple, while also somehow the most desirable catch for a couple of the town’s most eligible bachelors. Either relationship is patently shallow, as though ripped from the pages of some dime store paperback. She is first infatuated with Tate Walker (Taylor John Smith), the nice son of a fisherman with aspirations for college education and a tendency towards moralizing who teaches her how to read. He is unambiguously the good guy. Then there is Chase, smooth-talking high school quarterback, popular in town and with a streak of entitlement and arrogance only lightly masked by kind sentiments. He is obviously the bad guy. Both of them encapsulate fairly narrow archetypes, with only Chase being mildly interesting due to the slyly manipulative nature of his every word and action. But neither relationship feels all that palpable, neither boy particularly appealing. They’re presented in direct contrast to one another, binaries for Kya to choose from.
Sex is probably where the line is most firmly drawn: Chase is blunt and passionless, Tate tender but virginal -she wants it but he refuses out of a consideration that comes off as puritanical. It speaks to the story’s intrinsic general attitude, banal and antiquated-as though it were published in the 1960s, not merely set there. And one need look no further than to its’ token black characters for this as well: a pair of genteel, kindly, and devout shopkeepers with no agency to speak of, safe and subservient, and who exist only to help the white girl -an association that for its’ exclusivity transfers a degree of their otherness onto her. The ostracization and discrimination she experiences is thus implied to be comparable, which is a disingenuous and offensive notion the movie has no problems playing up. And it adds to the unbelievability of the entire affair -that this conventionally attractive if reclusive young white woman is more hated in a southern town in the 1960s than the local people of colour. Neither racism nor civil rights exist here, only Kya is unjustly treated.
Kya herself really isn’t that unusual, apart from the fact that she lives alone on the marsh. Though she’s somewhat poor it isn’t particularly apparent in how she dresses or carries herself. She’s simply an object of scorn for that most tedious of meaningless reasons, “being different”. As a child she barely gets through one day at school because of the other kids mocking her for being slightly behind on her literacy. Every reason for her to be an outcast is extremely hollow, especially to the point where a whole town is seemingly willing to send her to prison with no evidence just because she’s “weird”. Just because she keeps to herself and studies ecology and ethology, through which she manages to publish a reference book of sketches on the marsh -an aspect of her story arc and the larger narrative that feels unmistakably downplayed.
As difficult as much of this is to buy, Daisy Edgar-Jones’ performance is commendable. In fact a secondary function of the movie seems to be as a vehicle for her rising star -for those who didn’t see her award-winning U.K. series Normal People or missed Fresh on Hulu earlier this year. Weighed down by a poor script and saccharine melodramatic material, it’s not as strong a performance as either of those, but it’s certainly a capable effort. Edgar-Jones plays well the subtleties and emotionality of more than a few weak beats and comes out of the movie not much worse for wear -which can’t be said of most of her colleagues. Although the cadence of her accent (as with Dickinsons’) betrays her British roots more than intended.
There is a certain consistency though that Edgar-Jones relays in the character, that does on a small level come across genuinely. And it’s why the ending of the story is particularly nonsensical. Another of those things I can imagine might read better in the book, but as played here is little more than a cop-out twist, that in light of perceived character development and even a scene dedicated to preemptively refuting it, strains credulity even further. And for little more than some pseudo-feminist shallow catharsis. Not that it would have saved the movie either way though. Where the Crawdads Sing is a largely hackneyed parable that at times resembles a parody of a southern drama, it is so conventional and stale. If it brings more opportunities for Edgar-Jones it will have fulfilled as much of its’ purpose as can be reasonably expected. Nothing else to do with the film warrants a cursory glance.
Support me on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/JordanBosch
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Jordan_D_Bosch
Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/jbosch/
Comments
Post a Comment