Review: The Glass Castle

To call New York gossip columnist Jeanette Walls' upbringing conventional would be an understatement. Her childhood would seem straight out of a fairy tale concocted by the Brothers Grimm - nightmarish, extreme and emotionally abusive in hindsight but also a struggle that, to paraphrase one character, results in and is the cause of our beleaguered heroine's beauty and strength of character. The Glass Castle, the film adaptation of Walls' best-selling memoir, has moments of fascination and poignancy, but its universal truths are dampened by conventional execution, a palpable superficiality, and a sentimentality that was remarkably absent from Walls' book.

Memoirs, as with any adaptation, are tricky affairs. An adaptation should aim to catch the spirit rather than the letter of its source and the film's failure to capture Walls' essence is already its first flaw. The second, which is an unforeseeable circumstance, is having the misfortune to be released on the heels of last year's Captain Fantastic, which also explored children being raised in an anarchic household. Where that film was predominantly told through the vagabond patriarch's perspective, The Glass Castle is seen through the eyes of a daughter who comes to resent and be ashamed of her parents even as she can't help but love them.

When we first meet Jeanette (Brie Larson), she's cultured and successful. Looking at her carefully coiffed hair and 80s-era fancy outfits, one would never guess that she was severely burned as a child because her mother Rose Mary (Naomi Watts) let her cook her own meal unsupervised so she could continue painting, or that she ate a stick of butter because she was starving. For young Jeanette and her two sisters and one brother, their peripatetic and off-the-grid lifestyle was framed as a series of adventures by their mother and father Rex (Woody Harrelson). The children may have enjoyed the games but, as they grow older, it became clearer and clearer that Rex, especially, was making promises he would never keep. Things would always be the same, though Rex would always insist that they would be different. It's not that Rex and Rose Mary didn't love their children, but their parenting was selfish rather than selfless. Perhaps Rex might have been less mean were it not for his drinking problem, which exacerbates his belligerent railing against the establishment, but his hands-off approach and almost blithe disregard to his children's feelings would still be problematic under any circumstances.

Harrelson certainly does what he can with this larger-than-life character who constantly charms or punches his way out of situations, but too often his portrayal verges on the cartoonish. He's terrific in quieter moments, such as when a young Jeanette, disappointed that her father has spent the little money they had on drink rather than food for his starving children, asks him to stop drinking. It's in moments like this when the film comes close to Walls' plainspokenness and refusal to milk tears out of her situation. Director Destin Daniel Cretton, whose Short Term 12 featured Larson in her breakout role, brings his characteristic empathy to the fore, always humanising Rex and Rose Mary, never whitewashing their flaws but also, like Walls, recognising that she wouldn't be the person she is without them.

Yet, despite solid work from the cast and crew, The Glass Castle isn't as engaging or as powerful as it should be. Perhaps it's because its trajectory is so predictable, its supporting characters not as clearly defined, its truths not complicated enough, and its resolution too simple and engineered.

The Glass Castle

Directed by: Destin Daniel Cretton

Written by: Destin Daniel Cretton, Andrew Lanham; based on the memoir by Jeanette Walls

Starring: Brie Larson, Woody Harrelson, Naomi Watts, Ella Anderson, Chandler Head, Max Greenfield, Josh Caras, Charlie Shotwell, Iain Armitage, Sarah Snook