Mark Reviews Movies: SHIRLEY

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Review by Mark Dujsik | June 4, 2020

Never meet your heroes, they say, and that aphorism and its implications are at the cold heart of Shirley. The movie isn't a biography of author Shirley Jackson, best known for her novels and short stories driven by psychological and sociological horror, but its story, which features the writer as a major player, is clearly meant to mirror the tone and outlook of her work.

In other words, director Josephine Decker's movie is decidedly enigmatic and intentionally unpleasant, although the movie, unfortunately, also comes up a bit short in terms of insight about its subjects and subject matter. There are so many moving parts within this story—the biographical elements, a low-key psychological thriller, a mystery about a missing college student, the examinations of its main characters and their respective marriages—that much of it feels like a distraction of what's really happening here.

Sarah Gubbins' screenplay (based on Susan Scarf Merrell's novel) does eventually focus on the primary underlying conflict/tension. By that point, though, we've been distracted into apathy.

At its core, the story is about the games that certain people are willing to play with others—whether or not those people agreed to participate in the first place. For those certain folks, the agreement is never direct. It's always tacit.

Here, the pact seems to be made because a young woman dared to compliment the famed author's work. Maybe the compliment wasn't enough. Maybe the writer didn't appreciate the generic adverb-adjective combination that the fan used. Perhaps the movie's version of Jackson saw the praise as a challenge: If the young woman enjoyed how "thrillingly horrible" the author's "The Lottery" made her feel, just wait until Shirley makes her the unwitting subject of a tale being written out in real life and with very real consequences.

The reason could be even simpler. Shirley just might not like the young woman, who is happily married, has recently learned she's pregnant, possesses a sunny view on life and love, and is eager to do something with the promise of her life. Another maxim comes to mind: Misery loves company.

The young woman in question is Rose (Odessa Young), whose husband Fred (Logan Lerman) has taken a job as an assistant professor at Bennington College in Virginia. He'll be working under Stanley Hyman (Michael Stuhlbarg), whose classes and lectures on myth and folklore are popular among students.

Stanley is also married to Shirley (Elisabeth Moss), whose fame has exploded with the publication of her short story about a small town with a demented annual ritual. When the young couple arrives at the professor and author's home, Shirley is holding court, a drink in one hand and cigarette in the other, while relaxing in a chair and offering biting words to anyone who speaks to her. As the author heads upstairs for bed, Rose offers her compliment about the story, which is met with bemused silence from Shirley.

The rest of the story, as the young couple agrees to an extended stay at the house, focuses on many things. While her husband tries to convince Stanley that he should have a more active role in the classroom, Rose is stuck at the house, cleaning and cooking and avoiding Shirley's mercurial moods. The author, at first, is ruthless in regards to her new maid—revealing that Rose is pregnant before the young woman even has a chance to tell Fred, questioning Rose's virtue, insult. Shirley's own marriage has reached a grudging compromise because of Stanley's philandering ways.

The relationship between Rose and Shirley shifts, seemingly in a more positive direction, when the author decides to write a new novel, inspired by the case of a college student who went missing. The author, who often struggles to find the mental strength to get out of bed and rarely leaves the house, enlists Rose to research the student and her disappearance.

That plot thread ultimately goes nowhere (Rose steals the missing student's medical records and questions someone who may have seen her last, and Shirley's novel becomes a speculative account of what might have happened to the student). The point, eventually, becomes a bit clearer, as Shirley uses Rose for her own goals and, from one perspective, exploits the real disappearance to put her own feelings of loneliness and isolation to the page.

In the end, everything about this story comes back around to Shirley and her manipulative ways. When Stanley considers telling Fred that he doesn't think the young professor is capable of a more prominent job, Shirley steps in to suggest that her husband lead the young man on with positive reinforcement—if only so the destruction of Fred's spirit will be all the greater. The author even starts some mild flirtations with Rose, seemingly with the same goal in mind.

Moss' performance gets at the many facets of this character (We never believe that Shirley's emotional and psychological troubles are disingenuous, for example), while also ensuring that we don't lose sight of her sabotaging ways. She almost holds Shirley together, as the movie itself loses sight and track of its own purpose far too often.

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