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osprey_archerJosephine Decker's movie Shirley falls between two stools: it's half a (fairly loose) biopic of Shirley Jackson, and half a mood piece evoking the atmosphere of her works, and probably would have been the better for committing more fully to one of those modes.
I thought the biopic strand was stronger, partly because Shirley Jackson and her husband Stanley Hyman are fascinatingly dysfunctional (possibly even more fascinatingly dysfunctional in real life than in the movie), but also because the movie just didn't go quite dark enough to be a true Jackson mood piece. You never truly feel that murder or suicide are looming in the wings, let alone potentially demonic forces the more terrifying for never truly being explained; and without any of that, are you really evoking the spirit of Shirley Jackson?
However, watching the movie did finally pushed me to start reading Ruth Franklin's Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life, which may also push me to at last read Shirley Jackson's short stories and also see the recent film adaptation of We Have Always Lived in the Castle, so in that sense it has been a very salutary influence.
I thought the biopic strand was stronger, partly because Shirley Jackson and her husband Stanley Hyman are fascinatingly dysfunctional (possibly even more fascinatingly dysfunctional in real life than in the movie), but also because the movie just didn't go quite dark enough to be a true Jackson mood piece. You never truly feel that murder or suicide are looming in the wings, let alone potentially demonic forces the more terrifying for never truly being explained; and without any of that, are you really evoking the spirit of Shirley Jackson?
However, watching the movie did finally pushed me to start reading Ruth Franklin's Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life, which may also push me to at last read Shirley Jackson's short stories and also see the recent film adaptation of We Have Always Lived in the Castle, so in that sense it has been a very salutary influence.
