Wildcat (2024)

 I loved the film although I am not familiar enough with the writings of Flannery O'Connor to write a proper review. So I was delighted to find an erudite review on Dappled Things:

Wildcat does not present itself as a conventional biopic of O’Connor, although it faithfully incorporates her piety and her wit via her own words from her prayer journal and private correspondence. Rather, it serves as an introduction to several of her stories and the mind that created them. The film juxtaposes these stories with scenes from the pivotal period in O’Connor’s life leading up to her diagnosis and her realization that her hopes of being a New York writer will not come to fruition. As she comes home to Milledgeville and the care of her mother, Regina Cline O’Connor, the young Flannery surveys her surroundings. From them, she creates highly original work that initially struggled to find an audience. 

O’Connor’s world in the film is narrowed primarily to her interactions with her mother, portrayed by Laura Linney with subtlety and grace, and with the writer Robert “Cal” Lowell, presented not only as her teacher but also an object of desire. These were presumably choices for narrative economy. Lowell is shown as her only correspondent, and O’Connor’s aunt Katie (“Duchess”)  provides warmth and comic relief. By the end of the film a viewer might assume O’Connor cut herself off from the entire outside world in order to come into her flourishing as a writer.

Stories from the full scope of O’Connor’s career as a writer are dramatized during the film. Perhaps screenwriter/director Ethan Hawke and fellow screenwriter Shelby Gaines selected stories that they believed would best come to life onscreen, or perhaps we are meant to assume Flannery’s own experiences directly worked themselves out in her fiction. O’Connor sticklers may be surprised to see her dream up “Revelation,” which won the O. Henry Award for short fiction in 1965, while sitting in the doctor’s office with her mother more than ten years earlier. Yet the staging of this story in particular captures its humor and the psychological distortions of racism so effectively that such creative license is merited. (Read more.)

 

Another great review from Fr. Damian Ference at Word on Fire: 

I’ve been studying Flannery O’Connor for over twenty-five years, and I still remember reading “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” for the first time, and then “The River” and “Good Country People.” I remember laughing and being horrified. I remember wondering what I had just read and not knowing if I liked it or not. I remember asking friends and family members to read with me so that I could discuss these dark and humorous stories. I didn’t find many takers. So, I looked to O’Connor herself for answers. I picked up a hardbound used copy of The Habit of Being at Half Price Books and started to get to know the woman behind the stories through her letters. I discovered she was a devout Catholic, a voracious reader, a terrible speller, a good friend, funny as funny gets, and was slowly dying of lupus. Next, I bought a copy of Mystery and Manners, a collection of her essays in which she goes about explaining how she understands art, and faith, and writing in the South, and writing as a Catholic. Since then, I’ve read everything in her canon, plus most of the secondary sources. I’ve taught her stories, written articles, and recently published a book about Flannery O’Connor. Needless to say, I was thrilled when I heard that Wildcat was in the works. I am very grateful to Eric Groth, the executive producer of the film, for providing me with the opportunity to have an early screening of the film.

I had often thought that Emma Stone would play a good Flannery O’Connor, but I am glad it was Maya Hawke. In fact, if Stone’s acting in Poor Things earned her the Oscar for best actress in 2024, I think Hawke should take it in 2025 for Wildcat. The masterful acting is comparable, but Hawke takes on more characters, and unlike Bella in Poor Things, Flannery O’Connor would be a desirable friend. 

O’Connor’s most famous character is arguably The Misfit from “A Good Man Is Hard to Find.” Although we get a glimpse of him in Wildcat, the real Misfit of the film is O’Connor herself. She is a gifted female Catholic writer from the South who makes her way to the distinguished Iowa Writer’s Workshop to earn her MFA. Most of her professors and fellow students are men, many are from the North, and most don’t believe in God—and if they do, their understanding of him is puerile at best. Her talent as a writer is certainly recognized, but she never really seems to fit. In a notable scene, O’Connor joins a dinner party at the home of Robert “Cal” Lowell (played by Phillip Ettinger) but finds herself a misfit with any conversation or activity at the gathering. She’s not a heavy drinker, she’s not promiscuous, she’s not about small talk, and when the talk gets serious and the Eucharist becomes an object of ridicule, she, sitting at the center of a table reminiscent of the last supper, humbly but courageously asserts, “Well, if it’s a symbol, to hell with it.” And although O’Connor’s following lines are not historically from the same event, Hawke and Gaines appropriately insert them with creative liberty and fidelity to O’Connor’s theology: “What people don’t realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross. It is much harder to believe than not to believe.” (Read more.) 

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