Review by
Ren Zelen
Directed by: Josephine Decker
Starring: Elisabeth Moss, Odessa Young, Michael Stuhlbarg, Logan Lerman
For some people, confronting a house full of ghosts might seem a more
benign situation than braving a pack of judgemental housewives,
especially in the 1950s, an era haunted by impossible standards for
women. Finding herself among the snooty wives of academics, Shirley
Jackson must often have been the target of their gossip and probably
preferred to imagine herself trapped in "Hill House".
Jackson reputedly cultivated an interesting, if fearsome, persona -
prickly, idiosyncratic, unkempt, contemptuous. She was tolerated in
academic circles, being a successful author in her own right. Those
around her who were less talented or unconventional could only gain
satisfaction through their housekeeping and by having affairs, sometimes
with Jackson's philandering husband, even if they could never quite
tempt him away from her odd attractions.
Director Josephine Decker relishes the "attraction-repulsion"
dynamic, and in her latest film, Shirley, it's the energizer behind relationships. However, it must be stressed
that Shirley is not a biopic. It is based on
Susan Scarf Merrell's novel of the same name, which imagined the
life of Shirley Jackson and her husband Stanley Hyman, as seen through
the eyes of young newlyweds who come to stay with them in their home.
Moreover, it is told in the fevered style of one of Jackson's own Gothic
stories (aided by cinematographer Sturla Brandth Gróvlen, who
helps to create the hothouse atmosphere).
Shirley shows us Jackson's ordeal as a 1950s faculty wife
at Vermont's Bennington College. To take up some of his workload,
Shirley's husband Stanley Hyman hires a young teaching assistant, Fred
Nemser (Logan Lerman) and moves him and his pregnant wife, Rose
(Odessa Young), temporarily into their house.
Michael Stuhlbarg's Hyman is all bonhomie and smarmy
intellectual assurance, and yet there is some suggestion that he is not
simply a serial adulterer lying to his neglected wife. Hyman is at times
uncomfortably flirtatious, but he also has personal agendas.
Shirley is aware of Hyman's indiscretions, but there is a bizarre and
deep-seated alliance between them, one based on a rather brutal
intellectual superiority and their consciousness of remaining outsiders
and interlopers in the snobby, WASP academic community of North
Bennington.
While playing the jovial host at dinner, Hyman actively encourages and
enjoys the havoc Shirley creates by her inflammatory and pointed
comments. Hyman's congeniality masks a vicious contempt for the
privilege and entitlement of his students, not least of all for his
protégé Fred.
Meanwhile, young wife Rose's intention to analyse classes at the
college is quickly quashed, as Hyman asks her to help with the household
chores and the cooking while his wife is going through one of her
depressions, to give Shirley time and encouragement to start writing her
next novel.
Of course, conscious of the opportunity Hyman is offering to her
husband and the fact that they are guests in their house, Rose cannot
refuse. Her own intellectual ambitions are pushed aside, and she
succumbs to the role of cook, housekeeper and nurse, while she waits for
her unplanned pregnancy to come to term.
Shirley's temper and brusque imperiousness cause Rose to bristle on
more than one occasion, but eventually her admiration for her hostess’s
writing and growing understanding of the fragility that underlies her
fearsome exterior allows Rose to warm to her. Over time, the women begin
to forge a mutually supportive connection.
Jackson begins work on a new novel (1951's 'Hangsaman'), based on the
real-life disappearance of a local girl, Paula Jean Welden. The
disappearance of the young college girl sparks the imagination of both
women. They begin to speculate as to what might have happened - Was
Paula murdered? Did she commit suicide? Did she feel trapped in her
situation and just decide to vanish? As she creates the scenario for her
tale, in Shirley's imagination, faceless Paula takes on Rose's
face.
Becoming involved in Shirley's creativity, Rose begins to transcend her
task as housekeeper and takes on a more nurturing and contributory role.
As she does so, she begins to undergo a transformation herself, finding
the strength to examine her own beliefs and needs and start to oppose
the gender restrictions of society.
As in all her recent roles, in Shirley, Elisabeth Moss turns in
an impressive performance. She plays Jackson as a complex woman,
sometimes incapacitated with anxiety, at other times cynical,
formidable, ferocious and mischievous. With a gaze full of supressed
rage, she is like a volcano on the verge of eruption – dangerous.
As Rose, Australian actress Young is impressively able to play off
Moss's powerful portrayal and be equally enigmatic and unpredictable.
Lerman gives off the appropriate "privileged pretty boy" vibes as Fred,
the young buck willing to "do the right thing" by his wife but also all
too happy to take advantage of all the perks the male academic life has
to offer.
Stuhlbarg as Hyman maintains an intriguing balance between a womanising
and controlling manipulator, contemptuous of the class structures that
surround him, and a husband who is actually affectionately amused by his
wife's unorthodox intellect and supportively in awe of her talent.
However, there is an odd and glaring omission at the centre of the
movie - Shirley Jackson and Stanley Hyman actually had four children
together, yet screenwriter Sarah Gubbins and director Decker
choose to portray them as childless, even though Jackson wrote two
humorous books about parenting – 'Life Among the Savages' and 'Raising
Demons'.
Until her death in 1965 at the age of 48, from heart problems brought
on by smoking, anxiety and chronic ill-health, Jackson published over
200 short stories, two memoirs and six novels. Jackson once said, "I
wrote of neuroses and fear and I think all my books laid end to end
would be one long documentation of anxiety."
Her characters are often tormented by neuroses and find social contact
painful, so it is not surprising that Jackson herself had to overcome
bouts of depression and agoraphobia. In some of her stories the horror
is explicit, but in others it is more obscure and ambiguous. Often she
holds up a mirror to some of the most sinister, irrational and selfish
traits of mankind, and in that reflection her readers might realise some
harsh truths about humanity and perhaps about themselves.
Shirley is on MUBI UK
now.