Tracker Pixel for Entry

Josephine Decker Casts a Spell with Elisabeth Moss as “Shirley”

Cinema | May 31st, 2020

Another significant 2020 title skipping theatrical release for digital platforms, Josephine Decker’s “Shirley” premiered at Sundance in January, where Decker received a U.S. Dramatic Special Jury Award for Auteur Filmmaking. “Shirley” marks yet another career milestone for the dynamic filmmaker as she moves in the direction of wider accessibility and potentially larger audiences without abandoning the sharpest hallmarks of her breathtakingly personal storytelling techniques. The presence of Elisabeth Moss in the title role adds a layer of appeal to the lushly photographed and handsomely designed re-imagining of author Shirley Jackson’s idiosyncratic life in North Bennington, Vermont.

Decker’s film, with a screenplay by Sarah Gubbins based on Susan Scarf Merrell’s 2014 novel, has been erroneously identified as a Jackson biopic, but the events depicted in the book and on the screen are largely fiction. The messier, blurrier canvas perfectly suits Decker’s gifts by offering a space in which the filmmaker can continue to explore her interests in liminality and artistic/philosophical truth without the encumbrances of the dreary and the mundane. In other words, viewers looking for some kind of historically accurate staging of Jackson’s “life” will not find it here. Instead, “Shirley” fantasizes an intense and sexually charged variation on Edward Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” and Mike Nichols’ 1966 film of the play.

In real life, Jackson was married to professor and critic Stanley Hyman (a fantastically vain and oily Michael Stuhlbarg), by all accounts a philanderer in frequent pursuit of liaisons with his students. In the imaginary account, Hyman’s academic admirer and fresh Bennington College hire Fred Nemser (Logan Lerman) is invited to take a room in the house Shirley rarely leaves. Nemser’s new wife Rose (Odessa Young), it is quickly decided, can provide domestic “help” (or, perhaps more accurately, servitude) to Shirley while the men are on campus. Decker mines the rich vein of skewed gender expectations, using the period setting to focus viewer attention on so many absurd inversions. Stanley’s jealousy over the literary celebrity -- and profitability -- of triumphs like “The Lottery” always threatens to boil over.

Moss is nothing short of phenomenal, filling out her performance with a steady flow of poisonously perfect wisecracks, putdowns, and insults that hit their marks like darts from an accurately aimed and effortlessly puffed blowgun. Decker beckons us to follow this unusual guide on a journey deep into the overgrown and tangled jungle of creation and art-making. Rose, it unsurprisingly turns out, is far more suited to Shirley’s mysterious and mystical witchcraft than she is to cooking and cleaning. Is Shirley capable of true friendship or is she too armored, too caustic, too far inside her own tortured processes and alcohol bottles to open up her heart to another human being?

The answer to that question takes up the later stages of the film, and Decker, Moss, and Young all bask in the complexity and ambivalence and eroticism of the dialectics favored by the filmmaker: teacher/pupil, writer/reader, veteran/novice, dominant/submissive. Working on the book that will become “Hangsaman,” Shirley and Rose spend time thinking deeply about the Bennington student who disappeared without a trace on the hauntingly named Long Trail. Shirley says to Rose, “The world is too cruel for girls.” Paula Jean Welden really did vanish in December of 1946, the likely victim of violence at the hands of a man, and she is both doppelganger and ghost -- a vivid reminder of an unrealized future.

“Shirley” will be available on major digital platforms beginning June 5, 2020.

Recently in:

By Alicia Underlee Nelsonalicia@hpr1.comDairy Queen restaurants across the country will raise funds for Children’s Miracle Network hospitals during Miracle Treat Day on Thursday, July 31. At least one dollar from every Blizzard…

By Alicia Underlee Nelsonalicia@hpr1.comFM Pride Week returns to the Fargo-Moorhead metro August 3-10. A snapshot of events are listed below. Discover event descriptions and locations as well as volunteer opportunities online at…

Monday, August 11Fargo Theatre, 314 N. Broadway, Fargo “Saw The Musical” premiered Off-Broadway in the Fall of 2023, parodying the events of the first “Saw” film. It has been described as “a love story with fluidity (and…

By Sabrina Hornungsabrina@hpr1.com On July fourth, Nathan's Famous International Hot Dog Eating Contest took place at Coney Island. The winners, Joey Chestnut and Miki Sudo, reigned victorious. Chestnut earned his 17th title by…

By Ed Raymondfargogadly@gmail.comNotes about terror, tyranny, torture, freedom, laws, lies, and truthWhen Vice President Mike Pence needed an answer to a question about the 2020 presidential election that might end American…

By Rick Gionrickgion@gmail.com Holiday wine shopping shouldn’t have to be complicated. But unfortunately it can cause unneeded anxiety due to an overabundance of choices. Don’t fret my friends, we once again have you covered…

By Rick Gion and Simone Wairickgion@gmail.com The Red River Market returned to downtown Fargo on Saturday, July 12. The event will take place every Saturday except July 19. (That date will be moved to Sunday, July 20, due to the…

By Alicia Underlee Nelsonalicia@hpr1.comThe Moorhead Public Library will offer three free, all-ages outdoor concerts featuring regional bands this summer. The series begins on June 12 with the Meat Rabbits, a group that blends…

By Greg Carlsongregcarlson1@gmail.com When I first heard the premise for “Oh, Hi!” — which has been described as a “romantic comedy” if you imagine a twisted sense of the term — visions of two Stephen King novels popped…

Press ReleaseTouchmark at Harwood Groves will host a special artist reception featuring renowned glass artist Jon Offutt on Tuesday, July 29, at 2:00 p.m. in the community’s auditorium. The event celebrates Offutt’s temporary…

By John Showalterjohn.d.showalter@gmail.comPhoto by Yvonne Denault There is something intimate and personal about plays. Even in our age of multimillion dollar Hollywood productions and droves of streaming services, watching actors…

By Annie Prafckeannieprafcke@gmail.com AUSTIN, Texas – As a Chinese-American, connecting to my culture through food is essential, and no dish brings me back to my mother’s kitchen quite like hotdish. Yes, you heard me right –…

By Sabrina Hornungsabrina@hpr1.comNew Jamestown Brewery Serves up Local FlavorThere’s something delicious brewing out here on the prairie and it just so happens to be the newest brewery west of the Red River and east of the…

By Alicia Underlee Nelsonalicia@hpr1.comCaregivers for school-aged children and teenagers are encouraged to bring them to back-to-school immunization clinics scheduled for every Tuesday in August. Fargo Cass Public Health (FCPH)…

By Alicia Underlee NelsonProtests against President Trump’s policies and the cuts made by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) are planned across North Dakota and western Minnesota Friday, April 4 and…

By Vern Thompsonvern.thompson@rocketmail.com Working in the Bakken oil fields of the Williston Basin is so different from my home in Fargo. I'm not judging, because the people working and living in western North Dakota are very…