Anyone unfamiliar with her life and work may remain so after Ethan Hawke’s latest, Julia Hamilton despairs.
In his latest film, Wildcat, about the American Southern Gothic writer Flannery O’Connor (1925-1964), director Ethan Hawke (together with his co-writer Shelby Gaines) continues his fascination with the creative process that was apparent in his last film, Blaze, inspired by the life of the Texan songwriter Blaze Foley.
Hawke is clearly familiar with O’Connor’s oeuvre, drawing not just from her fiction but also her letters and diaries, some of which are only fairly recently in the public domain; her Prayer Journal, for instance, which demonstrates her desire to be the writer she wanted to be without displeasing God. “If my writing is scandalous,” she asks a priest (Liam Neeson) towards the end, “can it still serve God?” In spite of posing the question, the film makes no attempt to answer it.
