The life of a writer is a solitary one. While they are susceptible to edits and criticism, the ideas all come from the same cranial structure, forcing them to warp the world into some grand perspective that will define them. They need to have a grasp on language, human character, society changes, and anything that will make their work more timely, connecting with an audience deserving of their prose. To be a writer may sound easy since it’s often putting letters in front of each other, they remain fascinating because of the virtue that they’re never the same. They all have their own quirks that make you look at one and say “they’re weird!”
Then again, that’s what happens when you’re stuck for days, months, years on ideas that will amount to a few pages. It’s the studying of form and character that most others take for granted, and it’s what makes Shirley Jackson a fascinating case study. In Shirley (2020), we find Elisabeth Moss as Shirley on the quest of writing a novel. Having been known for writing short stories most of her career, the quest of getting a manuscript together is painful, especially with the judgmental eyes over her.
It’s accepted that she is a genius, a literary icon whose work has gained her a decent following. However, this manuscript serves as a mental deconstruction of the artist. She can’t help but become obsessed with a true crime story of a woman who goes missing, eager to find answers so that it will service her horror story. She doesn’t write horror. It’s a pedestrian genre according to her academic peers, including Stanley Hyman (Michael Stuhlbarg), who teaches a writing course that lures in a couple in Fred (Logan Lerman) and Rose (Nemser (Odessa Young) who will not only help take care of Shirley, but will be given compensation that includes free writing advice for Rose’s own manuscript.
There’s so much paranoia in the heart of Shirley that Rose begins to resemble this hallucinatory image of Paula: the woman who goes missing. There’s something about her that lures in Shirley, wanting to interrogate her. Maybe it’s a fit of jealousy that following Rose’s pregnancy, she becomes more of a prolific writer than Shirley. It could be that Shirley is just socially awkward to the point that she intentionally pours a glass of wine on the couch just to study human behavior.
Shirley is by all accounts a difficult person to live with. Stanley practically has to drag her out of bed every morning, forcing her to form a writing routine that will make her productive, producing work that will make her feel more fulfilled. The issue is that she is more obsessed with staring at others, studying situations on a quest to get a better idea of how she wants to write this horror novel. It’s a story about a woman who goes crazy, so it makes sense that among all things that happens, Shirley goes crazy.
It should be noted that this isn’t a conventional drama. Director Josephine Decker is someone who enjoys mixing a dreamlike stasis with more dramatic narratives, making it all a bigger commentary on artists. In her previous film Madeline’s Madeline (2018), she explored a world of theater kids who used the stage to escape their realities in a fantasized way. It’s a head trip, and makes everything she does in Shirley a lot more interesting. Add in that Moss is one of our most cerebral actresses of the modern era, and you get the chance to make one of the most confrontational, sometimes uncomfortable views of writing that’s less about getting out a pen and a pad and more about where things come from.
There are moments where Shirley confronts Paula. There’s little to suggest that they met, but Shirley’s ability to watch her navigate these surroundings, such as a crowded party or the ledge of a mountain, are the heart of the film. It’s the search for an answer in this horrifying reality. She wants some closure that will give her a bigger depth of the story. She goes crazy as a form of empathy, doing everything to write a character so lived in that she threatens to overtake all of Shirley’s brain.
An argument should be made that while this is a character study of Shirley Jackson, it’s far from a biopic, or even something resembling a conventional story. Maybe it’s more of an abstract painting, reflective of Shirley as a writer than a person.
All great movies about artists need to establish one thing: why were they significant? When presenting this in cinematic form, it’s too easy to format their stories into something we’ve seen before. However, that would be of great disservice, as the whole point we love these artists is because of how their work differed from the norm, maybe even reshaping it. Sure, Shirley could have had a more conventional text, but by focusing on a tone that was reflective of her work on stories like “The Lottery” or “The House on Haunted Hill,” it allows the audience to interpret what it’s like to engage with the author in her own words. Like reading one of her stories and having these abrupt revelations throughout that make the literary exercise splendid.
It’s why biopics as a genre remains so maligned by certain crowds. By reducing people of extraordinary talent to a formula, it normalizes them to such an extent that their accomplishments don’t mater. The audience has no chance to appreciate what they are beyond the umbrella idea of “creative,” it’s why Decker tackling Shirley with a dreamlike veil is powerful, bringing to life a performance that is surreal and one of the year’s best. She is battling a nightmare in her head as the world around her goes on normally. The only issue is that there’s some question at times as to what is real. You’re horrified and intrigued, wondering how anything will come of this futile exercise.
While their worlds are completely different, the Emily Dickinson biopic A Quiet Passion (2018) shares a similar mentality when it comes to playing with the cinematic form. The author was known for her poetry, which was published after her passing. Much like Jackson, Dickinson, while well-educated, was a bit of a recluse, obsessed with words and doing everything to shape them in a matter that best expresses the self.
It’s the territory that would make sense for a conventional biopic. Given that writers like Jane Austen and Sylvia Plath received similar treatment with underwhelming results, one would expect Dickens to fall victim as well. That would be the case if there wasn’t a filmmaker as adept and loving as Terrence Davies behind the camera, eager to not only explore the life of a woman who pushed boundaries in her own tight-lipped way, but also have a conversation with her work that is utterly delightful.
A lot of credit should be given to Cynthia Nixon, whose performance is one of her best and finds the observant eye once again taking on society. Only this time there’s no real uncomfortable pulling on people’s faces or hallucinating that she’s never met. Instead it turns a mansion into a landscape for poetic acting.
As much as this is a story that tracks Dickinson’s story from early life to death, it’s also a chance for Davies to put elevate her poetry into an art form. Okay, I know that Dickinson’s poetry is already an art form. It’s one of the best. But to hear them in a context of situations of her smashing plates while reciting elegantly laced prose and looking with this antagonistic eye is to notice the scenarios with which these words were birthed.
To study her poetry is to see the many themes that personally interested her. It’s everything from love to faith and death, these things that have unified humanity for centuries now. By placing these poems into these contexts, we’re witnessing what brings life and joy to Dickinson, who otherwise has this sense of isolation. She is fine being off on her own, working tirelessly on the word structures. These words aren’t for anyone else. This quiet passion is for herself to make sense of the world, feeling fulfilled that she has this personal document.
The biggest difference between Shirley and A Quiet Passion is the journey that each go on. The latter can be conceived as more of a conventional narrative, following the writer up until her passing. The final stretch of the film finds her growing ill, approaching death. While the poetry is still there to accentuate the moment, it’s a sad experience and one that highlights how alone Dickinson actually was. It’s given proper treatment, allowing the words to speak for her, but it’s clear how much this is more an exercise in adding contexts to things we’ve read for centuries without any deeper clarity.
Shirley is different in that she doesn’t die at the end. At most there is a piece of her insanity that will fade away, returning her to a smiling and dancing self. However, those who don’t know Jackson will be quick to think that she’s in a downward spiral, that this will all end horribly. Decker makes it all feel like an experimental story that just so happens to star Shirley Jackson. It doesn’t have to be true, even if every piece of fabric in this feels like it comes from somewhere real.
It also helps that it’s orchestrated like a horror film. There’s nothing exceptional about A Quiet Passion’s sound design, but for Shirley, we’re given a score that wouldn’t be out of place in Moss’ more direct horror movie The Invisible Man (2020). Every string sounds like it’s scratching from a rusty grave, the horns echo with constipation, and it feels very itchy. There is something disorienting about this music and it only helps to inform Shirley’s mindset on a subliminal level. This is saying that this isn’t conventional or normal. Whereas Stanley’s perspective is presented by more traditional pop tunes, Shirley is stuck in this kaleidoscope. One of the benefits of escaping is returning to the jubilant familiarity of the clearer expression.
The journey to this is one of the most creatively strange exercises in nonfiction that has been seen this year. With the modern rise in interest in Jackson’s work (see the Netflix series The House on Haunted Hill), it’s easy to understand why this film feels vital right now. It’s a chance to engage with a mind that is unhinged, eager to make sense of something that is just outside of reason. Decker has an excellent way of capturing the abstract, making these concepts feel familiar. Even if the point is that nobody understands Shirley, the audience kind of does.
Of course, there are things that are too deviant in behavior to be tolerated even for artistic license. Most of what Shirley does is intentionally appalling, reflective of a person in her own world where she can mold and change things as if molding her own interactive sculpture. Jackson is definitely presented as more aloof than Dickinson, though that could just be that tonally her work was more ambitious and explored mental illness in more fantastical manners. I don’t know how much of Shirley is true, but it feels more designed as an atmospheric experience than a fully real story.
These are two examples of movies that make the writing experience into something richer, choosing to engage with the subject in such a way that the viewer, who may not even be familiar with their work, understands it on a fundamental level. Why was there a need to put these words in that order? By the end, both Decker and Davies help you understand that to such an extent that it mythologizes them all over again. It creates an understanding that is profound, showing that life is stranger than fiction, even when it may be a bit of both.
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