Starring Elisabeth Moss, Michael Stuhlbarg, Odessa Young, Logan Lerman. Directed by: Josephine Decker
Do you have to like the characters that are in a film to like the film itself? It’s a question that a lot of people have asked over the years, and few have found a suitable answer. In the case of Josephine Decker’s latest film, the answer might be yes.
Shirley is about the writer Shirley Jackson and her husband Stanley Edgar Hyman, and the couple they entertain and then seek to ruin.
Jackson famously wrote The Lottery, a book with great social themes that appears to become more and more prescient at times goes on, as well as The Haunting of Hill House, considered by many to be the greatest ghost story ever written. Jackson only lived to 48, but her life was prolific.Â
In her role as Jackson, Elisabeth Moss reminds us just how talented she is. Similar to her role in this year’s horror The Invisible Man, here we see the effect of men on women and how women cope with such influences. Moss is fantastic in her role, giving Jackson the air of both a woman in control of nothing and beholden to no one. Similarly, Michael Stuhlbarg as her husband Stanley is affable and loathsome in equal measure; both actors show just what they can do when given roles to sink their teeth into.
Logan Lerman and Odessa Young, as the young couple they open their home to and begin to manipulate, are less certain. We never get a real sense of who they are, and they constantly seem like cyphers; as such it becomes hard to relate to them.
Decker, along with screenwriter Sarah Gubbins never really nail down why it is that Jackson and Hyman opt to try and ruin this couple, and as such it becomes harder to find anyone in the film to invest in emotionally. Jackson and Hyman are too manipulative to really like, and the young couple are far too bland.
It’s also a little hard to enjoy a film that appears to be making a claim from no fixed point of reference. For those who bridled at Bohemian Rhapsody and its fast and loose playing with history, this is just as bad, at no point is any reference made to the couple’s children, and while it was known that Jackson was dependant on substances, the film makes her out to be emotionally abusive to people too.
Decker has a good eye for shots, and frames Moss perfectly every chance she gets, as well as knowing how to time a moment of tension, to let moments linger longer than they should, or get the most from simple things like a person smiling with a dirty beard. Despite this the film still feels hollow; it lacks any substance, and when your film is about a great writer, poor storytelling is sort of unforgivable.
What this film provides is a perfect springboard for Moss and Stuhlbarg, who might very well find themselves on some awards lists for their performances, and Decker clearly has talent in her bones, but the film itself lacks much in the way of substance. Ultimately, Shirley feels like a wasted opportunity to explore a genius writer and the way she crafted her stories.
