1996, the best year in movie history, pt. 73: Angela
Ray Bradbury wrote a story, “The Miracles of Jamie,” about a boy with a sick mother, who believes that he has the power to heal: indeed, that he’s the second coming of Christ. I thought of it as I was watching Angela; and yet there’s a crucial difference between these stories.
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Six-year-old Ellie sings this during the opening credits. Perhaps she’s subconsciously thinking of her unwell mother (Anna Thomson – the scarred prostitute in Unforgiven) who alternates between despair and mania. But Ellie could just as easily be singing about Angie, her ten-year-old sister and de facto mother. Angie, too, is perturbed. She has visions of Lucifer, who supposedly lives in the cellar and intends to drag one of the family away with him. To stave him off, Angie and Ellie wander around their town and its environs, performing rituals of purification.
Their father neglects them. He is busy caring for their mother. Not a believer himself, he takes the family to church, hoping that it will have a calming effect. Instead, church provides Angie with the materials for building an alternate reality.
Dread suffuses this movie. Ellie re-enacts one of Angie’s rituals and sets a curtain on fire. Later, she and Angie drift toward menacing strangers: a sleepwalker, and a pedophile prowling a fairground. Angie is convinced that these people are angels. Amusingly, this belief is not unprotective. The pedophile is about to harm the girls when Angie’s religious fervor frightens him away. Angie attends a baptismal service. The baptizer, played by the ghoulish Vincent Gallo, dunks Angie in the river three times. Do it again, she insists. This is too much, even for Gallo.
Angie creates her own symbols, and the movie employs symbols I don’t understand. The girls find a white stallion in a field and lead him through the town. They visit a mechanic’s shop where all the workers are named Frank. Their babysitter suddenly goes into labor; Angie delivers the child. Angie and Ellie visit another family with many children. It’s announced that the cow is about to calve. The other children drop everything and leave to watch – but not Angie and Ellie, for whom birthing is old hat. Much of this is quietly funny. There’s dread, but there’s gentle humor, too. Even Lucifer, pale, handsome, and forlorn, is amusing, because he’s in his skivvies.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
A review of the Criterion DVD says:
Angie and Ellie are socially, if not spatially, isolated because their family has to keep moving (the mother keeps getting into trouble). The children may sporadically attend church and pick up some religious ideas, but no one checks whether they’re orthodox; for example, Angie never learns that one baptism suffices. The consequences of not grasping this point are disastrous. (Incidentally, my church held a baptism this morning, and our pastor explained what our church teaches about that practice. It was very clear. The Devil wasn’t mentioned. Curiously, he is mentioned in baptismal scenes in movies, like this one. I don’t know if any actual Christian baptismal tradition refers to the Devil.)
I doubt Miller is trying to say much about orthodoxy, but she certainly cares about making one’s belief system, and one’s way of life, authentically one’s own. The most obtuse adult in Angela is the father. Responsible and genial, he effaces himself to support his family. As a corollary, he placates his daughters and wife without taking them seriously; he ends up breaking promises and exploding in frustration. (Yet it’s hard to see what else he might have done.) His wife, an expressive type who used to perform onstage, may be breaking down, but she’s determined not to go a way that isn’t hers. Slender, sad-faced Thomson gives the movie’s best performance; is she supposed to recall Marilyn Monroe, who was married to Miller’s father, the playwright, Arthur? (I hope this rather crude speculation isn’t downright disrespectful.)
As for the children, Angie seems to be authentically following a vocation, however confusedly: saving her family from Lucifer. It involves real anguish. She fears someone must be sacrificed, and she struggles to accept that she might have to surrender herself; this is where the story differs from Bradbury’s. Finally, Ellie is the person for whom the sacrifice is made; the movie begins and ends with her.
Have a blessed Easter.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Down by the bay
Where the watermelons grow
Back to my home
I dare not go
For if I do
My mother will say
Did you ever see a _____ (goose kissing a moose)/(fly wearing a tie)/(etc.)
Down by the bay
Six-year-old Ellie sings this during the opening credits. Perhaps she’s subconsciously thinking of her unwell mother (Anna Thomson – the scarred prostitute in Unforgiven) who alternates between despair and mania. But Ellie could just as easily be singing about Angie, her ten-year-old sister and de facto mother. Angie, too, is perturbed. She has visions of Lucifer, who supposedly lives in the cellar and intends to drag one of the family away with him. To stave him off, Angie and Ellie wander around their town and its environs, performing rituals of purification.
Their father neglects them. He is busy caring for their mother. Not a believer himself, he takes the family to church, hoping that it will have a calming effect. Instead, church provides Angie with the materials for building an alternate reality.
Dread suffuses this movie. Ellie re-enacts one of Angie’s rituals and sets a curtain on fire. Later, she and Angie drift toward menacing strangers: a sleepwalker, and a pedophile prowling a fairground. Angie is convinced that these people are angels. Amusingly, this belief is not unprotective. The pedophile is about to harm the girls when Angie’s religious fervor frightens him away. Angie attends a baptismal service. The baptizer, played by the ghoulish Vincent Gallo, dunks Angie in the river three times. Do it again, she insists. This is too much, even for Gallo.
Angie creates her own symbols, and the movie employs symbols I don’t understand. The girls find a white stallion in a field and lead him through the town. They visit a mechanic’s shop where all the workers are named Frank. Their babysitter suddenly goes into labor; Angie delivers the child. Angie and Ellie visit another family with many children. It’s announced that the cow is about to calve. The other children drop everything and leave to watch – but not Angie and Ellie, for whom birthing is old hat. Much of this is quietly funny. There’s dread, but there’s gentle humor, too. Even Lucifer, pale, handsome, and forlorn, is amusing, because he’s in his skivvies.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
A review of the Criterion DVD says:
The commentary track … works much like a crossword puzzle’s answer key: It gives everything away, effectively ending the interesting part of the puzzle, but it’s still nice to know it’s available to provide closure. The 1995 debut feature of writer-director Rebecca Miller … is more enigmatic and open to interpretation than a crossword puzzle, however, and her decision to clearly lay out all the answers is a little surprising.Miller is interesting. I enjoyed her performance in Carroll Ballard’s Wind. I’ve not seen Personal Velocity, her most famous directorial effort, but I’ve seen The Ballad of Jack & Rose, in which an isolated girl insists on maintaining a very unconventional life for herself and her sick father.
Angie and Ellie are socially, if not spatially, isolated because their family has to keep moving (the mother keeps getting into trouble). The children may sporadically attend church and pick up some religious ideas, but no one checks whether they’re orthodox; for example, Angie never learns that one baptism suffices. The consequences of not grasping this point are disastrous. (Incidentally, my church held a baptism this morning, and our pastor explained what our church teaches about that practice. It was very clear. The Devil wasn’t mentioned. Curiously, he is mentioned in baptismal scenes in movies, like this one. I don’t know if any actual Christian baptismal tradition refers to the Devil.)
I doubt Miller is trying to say much about orthodoxy, but she certainly cares about making one’s belief system, and one’s way of life, authentically one’s own. The most obtuse adult in Angela is the father. Responsible and genial, he effaces himself to support his family. As a corollary, he placates his daughters and wife without taking them seriously; he ends up breaking promises and exploding in frustration. (Yet it’s hard to see what else he might have done.) His wife, an expressive type who used to perform onstage, may be breaking down, but she’s determined not to go a way that isn’t hers. Slender, sad-faced Thomson gives the movie’s best performance; is she supposed to recall Marilyn Monroe, who was married to Miller’s father, the playwright, Arthur? (I hope this rather crude speculation isn’t downright disrespectful.)
As for the children, Angie seems to be authentically following a vocation, however confusedly: saving her family from Lucifer. It involves real anguish. She fears someone must be sacrificed, and she struggles to accept that she might have to surrender herself; this is where the story differs from Bradbury’s. Finally, Ellie is the person for whom the sacrifice is made; the movie begins and ends with her.
Have a blessed Easter.
