The Life Wildcat Saves May Be Your Own

“An outline would be helpful at this point,” warns one editor, young Flannery O’Connor (Maya Hawke). Wildcat. Viewers may feel the same way about the Ethan Hawke film itself by the time the credits roll.

For many critics, Wildcat It felt like a confusing experience. After all, it is a one-part anthology, offering a fairly accurate depiction of five or six of O’Connor’s Southern Gothic short stories. But it’s also a one-part autobiography, depicting a pivotal season in O’Connor’s life and several flashbacks to her time at university. The connections between O’Connor’s stories and her life are not always immediately obvious. In the hands of a less senior director, the tension between these two halves is resolved Wildcat Maybe the film was torn.

However, Hawke’s provocative move to cast O’Connor as the main character in each of her short stories becomes one of the film’s saving graces. Some O’Connor fans might balk at the idea that she inserted herself into her novels in this way, which is also the case Katarina Dukalovic sticky. There is a valid debate to be had about whether such a move accurately reflects O’Connor’s approach to fiction.

As a narrative device, Hawke’s decision allows the film to focus on the central theme of O’Connor’s stories: the hypocrisy of whitewashed Christians and how we respond to that. By following how this theme is explored in each of the short story’s vignettes, careful viewers will discover that there is progression in these tales. hook He is trying to suggest something about how to respond to the hypocrisy of other believers.

We may not particularly like the film’s conclusions.

Wildcat is full of eloquent lines from Flannery O’Connor, drawn largely from her letters. And throughout the first half, the film eagerly takes aim at the complacent attitude that prevails in certain sections of the Bible Belt. “What people don’t understand is how much debt costs,” O’Connor says over a dinner party. “They think faith is a big electric blanket when in fact it’s the cross.”

Characters in O’Connor’s stories who cling to that electric blanket often experience a rude awakening. Early in the film, O’Connor reimagines her mother (Laura Linney) as the racist Mrs. Turpin (“Revelation”), spending her life thanking God that she is a wealthy member of society — as opposed to “white trash” or “white scum.” “N*********”. In one particularly jarring scene, Turpin imagines Christ asking her what she would prefer if she had to choose. The story ends poetically with Flannery imagining herself strangling Mrs. Turpin while declaring her a pig from hell. Violence has always been a major theme in O’Connor’s work, yet the film makes these brutal acts seem like O’Connor’s personal confession.

However, there is a price for being the only one to see the hypocrisy of the Christians around her. Throughout the first half of the film, O’Connor feels constantly alone, rejected, and out of harmony. This attitude bleeds through every one of her stories. In the previously mentioned story, her character was mocked for being antisocial. In another story (“The life you save may be your own”), she imagines herself as a deaf-mute girl, used and abandoned by everyone around her—especially by Christians who cannot tell the difference between an honest man and an honest man. Antichrist.

Viewers who have denounced hypocrisy in the past and experienced rejection from what should have been a safe society may find much to connect with in O’Connor here. When warnings against wolves in sheep’s clothing fall on deaf ears, one may feel as voiceless and homeless as her character when she is abandoned on the side of the road. Hawke’s portrayal of O’Connor, both in real life and in her story, leaves us with poignant images of what it means to feel misunderstood.

When her mother pressed her about the novel, and her editor kept rejecting it, O’Connor explained that it was “about an atheist who sleeps with a prostitute and then starts his own religion called the Church of Christ Without Christ.” “A church without Christ?” her mother asks in confusion. “Like most people I know,” O’Connor jokes. But one can imagine the alienation she felt when her editor read that story and suggested it No, it’s too weird and angular In order to publish.

It seems that highlighting hypocrisy not only distances a person from the people who call them out, but observers who hear such experiences and fail to understand them can make one feel even more isolated and alone.

midway However, throughout the film, O’Connor’s author entries take a surprising turn. Amid flashbacks to a moment of literary appreciation in college, she tells a story (“Parker Returns”) that imagines herself as a fundamentalist woman who falls in love with and marries a tattooed “bad boy” farmhand. The story ends with her hitting her husband because he tattooed Christ on his back, and she screams: Who is this? Nobody I know!” The paradox writes itself.

Considering everything that has been depicted so far in the film, this might seem like an odd character for Flannery. Previous stories have depicted her as a helpless girl suffering because of the fundamentalists’ naivety, or as an enlightened outsider who sees the fundamentalists’ facades for what they are. In any way possible she Be a hypocritical, naive fundamentalist?

But O’Connor is far from a perfect Christian. “My thoughts are so far from God, and maybe he didn’t create me,” she muttered shortly after denouncing electric-blanket Christianity. Alongside her blame for easy believers, there is a huge well of guilt. The next story (“Whatever Rises Must Converge”) follows her as she verbally overcomes her mother’s personality with such insistence and ferocity that her mother has a heart attack. Her character is left screaming for help, realizing perhaps for the first time that she cares for her mother much more than she lets on. What’s more, the way she went about denouncing her mother’s hypocrisy may not have been particularly loving.

In a pivotal conversation with her priest, she admitted, “I don’t mean to be smart…even though I am He does “I mean to be smart, and I want you to think so.” There is a sin of her own that lies behind her condemnation of the hypocrisy of others – her belief that, as a trained intellectual, she is better than these unenlightened country folk. Whether dealing with University of Iowa intellectuals or Georgia farmers, she longs to be a prophet. However, in a moment of extreme honesty, she told the priest: “I claim to be a Sufi, but I am a coward. “I’m a butterfly. I’m going to be a king.”

This situation is reflected in the final story (“The Good Country People”) where the enlightened college graduate is still gullible enough to be tricked by a charlatan. Despite her education and pride, she is hardly any wiser than the people she has spent half her life running away from.

It turns out that flawed humans often make poor prophets. Decrying the hypocrisy of others does little to address what is buried in our hearts. Without denying the ugliness of hypocrisy, the film leads viewers to examine whether Satan might not use such hatred of white behavior to instill self-pride in us.

one One of Christ’s most memorable parables is the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector (Luke 18:9-14). It may also be one of the easiest to misapply. How many of us read this parable, think about the people in our lives who act like self-righteous Pharisees, and then walk away saying, “Thank God I’m not one of them.” Those the people!”

But like the proverb Wildcat This book ends with an uncomfortable conclusion: that sometimes, striving to eliminate hypocrisy from the lives of others can become a distraction from our need to come to Christ in repentance.

The film ends with O’Connor painfully (because lupus now limits her mobility) rearranging her room so that her desk no longer focuses outward on the world (a symbol of her desire to leave her bigoted hometown for most of the film), and instead focuses inward. She has accepted living at home during this season, and realizes that she and her mother probably have more in common than she would initially admit. Because they both know what it means to look down on others and think they are superior to them. But now O’Connor has a more honest appreciation for her character, its warts and virtues alike.

Electric blankets make us believe that the deepest sins lie behind them therein the lives of those who sully the name of Christ through double-minded actions. The Cross reminds us that suffering draws us into the greatest battle between good and evil, and to what extent that battle is fought in our hearts. To reuse the Savior’s words, before we point out our brother’s electric blanket, we must first address our own blanket.

Satan wants nothing more than for us to see the double-mindedness of everyone but ourselves. Because it can frighten us to turn our gaze from the world to our souls.

However, as Priest O’Connor reminds us and all of us, “The idea that grace is healing ignores that before it heals, it is cut by the sword that Christ said he came to bear. The path to happiness begins with a powerful stroke. Joy overcomes sorrow.”