As far as literary biographies go, the story of Southern novelist Flannery O’Connor plays like a lot of them do: Brilliant, abrasive, scholarly, progressive, sickly, short-lived. Wildcat could be a very traditional, forgettable biopic if that is how director Ethan Hawke wanted to run with it, but he instead decides to do something novel, melding Flannery adaptations with her real life in such a way that newcomers might be a bit confused as to what is happening. But then Hawke isn’t making an introduction here, he’s made a movie that readers of Flannery will appreciate and possibly even cherish. For everyone else is will come across as dull and at times clumsily executed.
With Maya Hawke in the role of Flannery, one might be tempted to assume it was him who placed her in this position. But that would be wrong, as it was Maya who developed the project and offered it to him to direct. Their creative sensibilities are aligned, though, with the film feeling a lot like Hawke’s soulful 2018 biography Blaze about country musician Blaze Foley, which also took an unconventional narrative approach.
Wildcat begins with a quote by Flannery about fiction not as an escape from reality, but as a plunge into it. Hawke takes this idea and drills down on it, placing Flannery and her shrew of a mother (Laura Linney) inside tellings of her short stories, such as “Good Country People”, “Everything That Rises Must Converge”, and many more, always in contentious positions in an echo of her home life. It’s these star-studded renderings of Flannery’s stories that are the best part of Wildcat, offering Hawke and Linney numerous lively characters to indulge in, while offering memorable, if brief, performances by Philip Ettinger as poet Cal Lowell, plus Rafael Casal, Cooper Hoffman as shady Bible salesman Manley Pointer, Steve Zahn, Vincent D’Onofrio, Ethan’s son Levon Hawke, Willa Fitzgerald, and even Liam Neeson.
These brief adaptations are so good that it’s a drag to return to Flannery’s actual story, beginning in the 1950s as she’s attempting to hone her craft without compromising her voice. Alessandro Nivola plays a publisher who wants to work with her, only to have Flannery refuse to draw up an outline because, well, she doesn’t do outlines. Hindered by a lupus diagnosis, a troubled relationship with her mother, and the false piety and outright racism of the people in her community, Flannery would be excused for wanting to flee from reality into the surreal. But Wildcat is reductive and painfully literal in its exploration of the writer’s life and its connection to her works. Attempting to bring so much of Flannery O’Connor’s writing to life shows the admiration Ethan and Maya have but it’s also an overwhelming burden. And it might’ve been more successful if the Hawkes had teamed up with this amazing cast for an anthology series that could do her proper justice.
Wildcat opens in select theaters on May 3rd, expands nationwide on May 10th.
