Wildcat

A weird movie based on the work ok some author only intelectual people know, there is a lot of cameos by friends of the director Ethan Hawke, his daughter is good in this, she is clearly not a nepobaby like others, she knows how to act, the rest of cameos are fine, especially Neeson and Zach, overall it's just a poetic and interesting movie, its hard to follow, but its kinda worth watching it some raining sunday after exercising. Its the type of movie to watch while you gaming

There is a couple of boring religious stuff, other than that it's a good time in my books. Another decent Hawke directional movie.

Whether you're a devotee of writer Flannery O'Connor or unfamiliar with her work, 'Wildcat' is a very intriguing film. It challenged me like no other film I've seen in years.

O'Connor was a Southern writer in the mid-twentieth century whose life was cut short by lupus. The movie not so much examines her life and work as puts you in the middle of it. It's like a dreamlike poem, with snippets of the artist's life seguing into vignettes from her short stories and vice versa. At times I wasn't sure if I was watching a scene from the artist's life or from her work.

'Wildcat' is not for everyone but it is a beautiful film and should please the arthouse crowd and certainly readers of Flannery O'Connor.

The film was a labor of love for its star Maya Hawke, who was an executive producer. You might know Ms. Hawke from TV's "Stranger Things". To me, her performance in 'Wildcat' is a revelation. She brings the artist to life, capturing her vulnerability, creative fire and physical frailty. Hawke plays multiple roles in the film in the various vignettes inspired by O'Connor's short stories.

Esteemed stage and screen veteran Laura Linney hits the mark as O'Connor's well-meaning but sometimes clueless Southern Belle mother. Linney also plays multiple roles in the film's dreamlike vignettes.

Renaissance man Ethan Hawke, Maya's father, directed and captured the sweeping southern landscapes as if they were postcards and much of the cinematography is achingly beautiful. The story goes that this was Maya's project all the way, and that Ethan had to be interviewed to get the job directing his daughter.

Whether or not 'Wildcat' will find a large audience, its lasting legacy will be that people like me will find the work of Flannery O'Connor. It will also mark a turning point in the career trajectory of Maya Hawke, who is an artist to keep an eye on.

Wildcat is the story of Flannery O'Connor (Maya Hawke), a Southern Catholic writer who lived from 1925 to 1964 and was disabled by Lupus in her later years. Although the movie shows O'Connor traveling to Iowa and New York to further her writing career, most of the plot takes place in her family's home as she types away on multiple drafts of her stories while the disease takes its toll. O'Connor is shown as socially awkward, and her mother and others cannot comprehend the motivations for her fiction. Possessing a strong faith, she explores the bizarre and twisted ways in which people can be affected by religion.

Interspersed with slow-moving scenes of O'Connor's life (non-chronological) are scenes from her fiction, acted out by the same cast of characters. Where the real segues into the fictional is sometimes hard to discern. The fictional scenes provide some insight into O'Connor's mindset but, having not read her writing in many years, I was hoping for even more insight into the influences on her writing (I probably hoped for too much). The movie is a portrait of a troubled soul that will interest her devoted readers and perhaps entice others to sample her offbeat fiction.

Wildcat (2023) directed by Ethan Hawke is an attempt on creating a portrait of auguished writer, Flannery O'Connor. The lead actress, Maya Hawke (daughter of Ethan Hawke/Uma Thurman) takes a huge leap to portray the Lupus illed short fiction writer.

There are quiet, dreamlike moments in this film, giving insight to race and class through the writers and the Southern scenes. There's playful scenes of intertwining O'Connor's short stories with historical facts.

At the end, the scenery filmed in Kentucky, carries a strong narrative with a decent soundtrack, hoping to bring it to the finish line. The film become a little lost -- not knowing if it goes on a religious or spiritual route on O'Connor story or take a hard look at racism and class in the southern intellectual culture.

It's ending, shows an the tortured health of the writer continues and does the writing without knowing life's complexity, a maybe tribunal nod to the Catholic devout O'Connor.

The film is a melding of Flannery O'Connor's life with several of her stories as she labors to write after a diagnosis of Lupus. She's living on her mother's Georgia farm but corresponding with her editor in New York. While she writes her novel "Wise Blood" she also churns out a bunch of short stories.

Maya Hawke is excellent as O'Connor and several of the characters in the stories as is Laura Linney as the mother and several characters in the stories. The film is directed and co-written by Ethan Hawke.

When I was still teaching American Short Stories classes I would always xerox off a few O'Connor stories and Robert McAlmon's "The Jack Rabbit Drive" to add to the book we had to use. The film recreates a few scenes from O'Connor's story "The Life You Save May Be Your Own," and I remembered from reading biographical material that she had sold this story and a TV adaptation was made and how she howled in disbelief that they miscast Gene Kelly as the main character.

Well, good old Youtube sports this 26-minute horror with Gene Kelly as Tom Triplett (it's Shiftlet in the story) the one-armed handyman who comes upon the dirt farm of Mrs Crater and her daughter Lucy Nell. Agnes Moorehead and Janice Rule play the women. The ending is totally changed (and ruined) by the Schlitz Playhouse adaptation. The role is totally out of Kelly's depth (Kelly was never a very good actor). O'Connor never sold another story to be filmed in her lifetime.

Anyway, Wildcat is well worth tracking down even if you're not familiar with O'Connor's singular world view.