Shirley (2020) Review
Image courtesy of Neon
The Sundance Film Festival fueled my excitement at the beginning of this year, enough to make a Letterboxd list of “Most Anticipated Movies of 2020”. But with the pandemic shutting down movie theaters, film festivals, and the film industry as we know it, the joke has been on me. Luckily in the age of streaming, some of these movies are still being released, although perhaps not in the way that directors and distributors imagined. One of the films at the top of my list was Shirley which premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. Directed by Josephine Decker, best known for her 2018 breakout Madeline’s Madeline, Shirley is loosely based on the life of Shirley Jackson, the reclusive horror writer and author of The Haunting of Hill House. Adapted from Susan Scarf Merrell’s novel of the same name, the book follows newlywed couple Fred and Rose Nemser as they stay with Shirley and her husband Stanley Hyman in the fall of 1964.
I was tentatively excited when I learned of this movie; I wasn’t a fan of Decker’s breakout Madeline’s Madeline and found her auteur style of filmmaking slightly grating. But I was pleasantly surprised by Shirley. With a debut script from Sarah Gubbins, who wrote a few episodes of Better Things, one of my favorite TV shows currently airing, Decker’s usual auteurism is given a roadmap to follow. The dream-like sequences mixed in throughout the film never halt the overall pacing or feel out of place. Oftentimes, they call into question what is reality and what is Shirley’s imagination and allows the audience to stay on their toes. Almost every frame is washed with a hazy, ethereal glow and Sturla Brandth Grøvlen’s (Netflix’s The Discovery) cinematography is truly breathtaking—every shot feels purposeful and many of the scenes are framed in an unconventional way that complements the unconventionality of the story. Tamar-kali’s score is dazzling, and never detracts from the action on screen. It heightens or deflates the tension as needed and adds to the atmosphere. It’s simple but oddly surreal and unlike most film scores I’ve heard.
Elisabeth Moss stars in the titular role (*Beanie Feldstein voice*) and she continues to display her range. Michael Stuhlbarg as Jackson’s husband Stanley is the ying to Moss’ yang and is deliciously pretentious and sleazy. They have several tense and hilarious interactions throughout the film that display how terrible they both are. Newcomer Odessa Young from Sundance’s 2018 big seller Assassination Nation is Rose, wife to Logan Lerman’s Fred, and linchpin of the film. Much of the film is seen through her eyes, and although we don’t know much about her character’s backstory, she develops Rose further in her performance. Lerman is unfortunately the weakest performance in the film, although like Rose, there isn’t much of a dynamic aspect to his Fred either.
There were a few points in the middle where the film felt like it dragged slightly and the supporting characters felt less developed than our protagonist and her husband, but depending on how you interpret the ending (which I will not be spoiling in this review), this could be an intentional choice. It wasn’t quite as eerie as I would’ve liked it to be, but it did elicit a “huh” from me at the end and inspired me to seek out more of Jackson’s short stories.
If you enjoy Moss or Stuhlbarg or enjoy films that are a little odd and nontraditional, you will probably enjoy Shirley. You can check it out on Hulu now, and I’d love to know what you think.
3.5/5 stars