Rating: R
Runtime: 1 hour, 59 minutes
Director: Michael Morris
Quick Impressions:
What a fantastic movie! I had no idea I would like this so much. I watched it late at night on impulse because I was frustrated with something I was writing, and I’m so glad I did. Now there are tears standing in my eyes, and I feel a rush of elation.
I’ve loved Andrea Riseborough since Oblivion. She made such an impression on me in that film. (I liked her disproportionately. She was my favorite part of the movie along with the cinematography. I remember thinking Claudio Miranda’s cinematography was gorgeous, but when I try to recall an image, all I see is Andrea Riseborough’s eyes.) So I’m excited to see her get a nomination.
Best Actress is the most surprising category this year. I checked out of movies for a while because I was busy, so I missed Till and The Woman King. I was excited I would finally get to watch them this week. Viola Davis never gives a bad performance, and Emmett Till’s mother is such an intense role. (I still intend to watch those films, but since I always do Oscar write-ups, they’ll have to wait.) For what it’s worth, I think Ana de Armas makes a superb Marilyn Monroe. If you like Marilyn Monroe, de Armas’s performance is good enough to justify watching Blonde. (And if you like Marilyn Monroe and you’ve seen Blonde, you know what a compliment I’ve just paid that performance!)
I knew nothing about To Leslie but the title until the night I watched. Then I read a one-sentence summary. “A West Texas single mother wins the lottery and squanders it just as fast.” I thought, “Oh no! It’s my biopic!” You’d think after winning four games of Jeopardy! you’d be set for life, but my husband and I are so spendy, and my kids have extravagant hobbies like making meringue ghosts, dyeing Easter eggs, and outgrowing their clothes. Money scares me.
I felt such empathy for this protagonist. I frequently find myself in situations where I think intently, “Now, all you have to do, Sarah, is not mess up this thing.” And then I mess up the thing. Immediately. Irreparably. The thing explodes in my hands. So to get any amount of money suddenly is very nerve-racking. When you don’t have money, you often think desperately, “Oh my God! I don’t have any money! What will I do now?” Then you get some money, and you think, “Oh my God! I got some money! What will I do now?” Prestige, credibility, power—all these things work the same way. You can’t be accused of bad stewardship if you don’t have anything. But then you suffer.
The Good:
As the story opens, Leslie wins $190,000 in the lottery. Then just six years later, she’s completely broke, an alcoholic, and evicted for never paying her rent.
I am so afraid something like this will happen to me. I am a person who requires so much help. And then I need just a little bit more help. In college, I remember thinking, “One day, you’ll be alone, out on the street, and there won’t be anyone left to help you, and you’ll die.” That future haunts me. The possibility of deserving my children’s scorn and ruining their lives also haunts me. I’m so bad at falling asleep. If I ever lose health insurance and can’t afford medication, you can be sure I’ll never sleep again. And then I’ll die of adrenal exhaustion. That frightens me.
I could empathize with Leslie’s state of, “You would think that was the sorriest I could be, but now I am even sorrier.” It’s so demoralizing to disappoint people, especially when you’re trying not to. It’s clear she loves her son.
There’s so little separating any of us from utter ruin.
At first the film reminded me of The Florida Project (a movie I liked a lot, especially that last scene) because Leslie takes the unorthodox approach of vehemently screaming and swearing at people before asking them for favors.
About two-thirds of the way through, I suddenly realized, Wait. I don’t know what I’m watching. There are two ways a movie like this could go, and I don’t know which kind of movie this is!
And then it became so suspenseful.
Riseborough’s performance is fantastic. If I’m being brutally honest, she is probably giving the best performance of the category. (And I say that as someone who loved Tár, always loves Cate Blanchett, and also likes Michelle Yeoh.) Riseborough’s performance is what makes this film special because you want to keep watching her, even though the character is self-destructive and in crisis. Riseborough makes Leslie sympathetic despite all her weaknesses. She’s her own worst enemy. She’s deeply flawed, and we appear to be seeing her at her lowest ebb.
To me, the character’s level of distress makes her appealing. (Seeing someone suffering like that rouses my concern, and I get invested.) But it would be just as reasonable to have a knee-jerk reaction against Leslie (especially if you’ve had negative experiences with an addict in your own life, or you have an estranged parent).
But even if it takes you a while to warm up to the character, it’s hard not to be fascinated by Riseborough’s riveting performance right from the start. Even if you’re put off by what Leslie is doing, if you like acting, you’ll still be interested in what Riseborough is doing. It’s hard to carry a movie as a character in crisis. (It’s the best kind of part to have, but if you can’t pull it off, the movie is ruined.) Plus, watching, I believed she was from Texas, and I know she’s from England, and I’m from Texas. Riseborough disappears into the character so thoroughly that you don’t even notice. You just watch the character. I started watching for the actress, but before long, I was watching Leslie, concerned about what would happen to her.
I can’t recall the last time I rooted so hard for a movie character. There are a couple of scenes near the end that practically made me yell out loud in desperate horror. Very late in the film, when Leslie walks out the back door, I thought I would explode from the suspense and dread and concern. I cared what would happen there so much.
Marc Maron plays the kindest man in the world. (I don’t know what else to say. I kept thinking, “What a nice man!”) Honestly, he’s so nice that you start to wonder, “Is he kind of in love with her, or is he just like so, so nice?” Either way, what a kind-hearted person! When you learn the character’s backstory, his behavior makes a little more sense. (His secret is, you see, he’s an extraordinarily kind person.)
Meanwhile, everyone else in this town is horrible. This is the meanest movie town I’ve seen since the 2017 It. (Those people are all awful, too!) The vibe rings very true, though. Small town culture can be so vindictive, full of people with bitter grudges and long memories.
The general horribleness and casual cruelty of most people in the movie works in Leslie’s favor. If anybody in the audience doesn’t like her because of her own awful behavior, surely you’ll warm to her because of everyone else’s awful behavior. They are so mean. I kept thinking, “This person needs help. Can’t you see she needs help?”
I spent most of the movie despising Allison Janney’s character. (I always like Allison Janney, but this character is so relentlessly cruel.) Initially she comes across as petty and childishly vindictive, but we do finally get an explanation for her behavior. (I kept watching, thinking, “Okay, fine, but what did she ever do to you?” But then you find out the real issue, and think, “Oh, I see. Okay.”
Riseborough carries the movie, but the rich atmosphere of the story’s setting (augmented by the soundtrack) is another real asset. I live in Texas. Sometimes movies entirely fail to convey what small town Texas is like. But this does feel like Texas. My in-laws live in the Hill Country, and the scenes at Dutch and Nancy’s place remind me so much of their house (except my mother-in-law doesn’t send me out to chop wood while she loudly rails against me within earshot). Recently, depictions of Texas in film and television have gotten far more realistic. (I always attribute the positive change to Matthew McConaughey. Perhaps I overestimate his cinematic legacy, but I really do think he’s helped.) This movie gives us actual Texas. (There’s much more to Texas, of course.) I’m not exactly a part of the culture shown here, but I dip my toe into it, and it’s real.
Many scenes made me think of Nomadland. There, Frances McDormand is inserted into the lives of real “nomads.” Here, Stephen Root and Allison Janney put on appropriate costumes, do passable accents, and visit small town Texas. (I can’t decide if I liked Root’s performance. I was so surprised to see him. I could never get over the surprise of seeing him there.)
One strength of the story is the way it breathes new life into exhausted tropes. At one point, I thought, “She doesn’t even know how beautiful she is!” (Then I laughed at myself.) But Leslie truly does not see her own worth. (Finally even the film itself makes a point of emphasizing this, in case we have failed to notice.) I kept wanting to tell her, “Please don’t be the worst version of yourself.”
The story the movie tells is so simple, and it’s the kind of thing we’ve all seen a million times before. But I got so invested. Personally, I’ve struggled a great deal lately with recognizing the difference between being bad and feeling bad. I’ll say, “I’m bad,” and my husband will say, “No, you feel bad.” (And I’ll say, “Yes, I feel bad because I’m so bad,” but mean it yet be unable to produce evidence of this alleged badness. I don’t know why I get into these moods of thinking I’m an irredeemably evil misanthrope. It makes even less sense because when I feel that way, I continue liking everyone, just not myself. So I guess it’s true that I’m a bad misanthrope.) Leslie feels bad. She has done things that are bad (one thing in particular). But the film wants to show us that if you make a mistake, try again. Even if you do something truly awful, you can still try to make amends. Even if life is bad for a long time, there still can be good moments. Can you make a permanent change for the better? Can self-improvement last? Well, at the very least, it can last until the end of the movie! That’s good enough, isn’t it? Life is a collection of moments. When you’ve finished living, one moment is just as valid as another. As long as there are some good moments, good.
Best Joke:
I could relate to the conversation Leslie and her son, James (Owen Teague) have about going to the zoo. I laughed out loud at her response when he asks, “How would you like it if people stood around watching you suffer?” (Also, my go-to solution to family ennui is often, “We should go to the zoo!” This is the perfect activity when kids are little. You can get out in the sun, get some exercise, enjoy a beautiful day. How wholesome! But as soon as people start asking things like, “Why would going to the zoo help?” or “What’s the point of going to the zoo?” or “Haven’t you noticed the animals are all in cages and zoos are immoral?” then the whole thing just falls apart, and you feel even worse! Her desperate zoo gambit is so sad. (This part of the film is hard to watch, anyway, because both mother and son obviously love each other, and the viewer can sense something catastrophic is inevitable.)
Best Scene:
I loved the way Marc Maron’s character, Sweeney, gives Leslie some unexpected news in their first scene together. I thought, “What a nice man! How did he end up living in this awful town full of mean people?”
Best Scene Visually/Most Oscar Worthy Moment, Andrea Riseborough:
Two scenes work in tandem, one early and one late. In both of them, Leslie sits at the bar. In one, she’s contemplative and drunk, and in the other, she’s contemplative and sober. You could scrap the rest of the movie, include only these two scenes, and end up with a poignant short film that still showcases the nuance of Riseborough’s turn as Leslie and the range she shows in a single performance. (It would also legitimately work as a film.)
Best Moment with Allison Janney:
Janney’s last scene surprised me with a very good explanation for her character’s behavior. Until then, the pitch of her viciousness made no sense to me. I was pleased to be given a reason to reevaluate my assessment of Nancy. To me, it makes no sense to be so cruel to someone because of something they did. But it makes a lot of sense to come unglued with rage because of something you did. I appreciated finally getting to see her point of view.
The Negatives:
I don’t have many complaints here. This movie elicited such a powerful response in me. By the end, I was deeply emotionally invested. I kept thinking, “If one of these people is in love with the other one, and the other one doesn’t feel that way, then I will propose to the first one myself because she’s so wounded, and he’s so kind. I don’t want anything to hurt them.” I was so invested in the characters. I felt such intense horror and dread late in the film every time she’d face a decision.
What does frustrate me is that with some distance from the movie, I’m finding it difficult to describe why it engendered these deep, powerful feelings. The story is simple. And the cathartic resolution we get at the end isn’t necessarily a permanent thing. We don’t know what will happen the next day, and the next day, and the next day.
But honestly that’s just another way of complimenting the movie. Nothing remarkable happens. Nothing too original happens. But we really, really, really care about the characters, to an unusual degree. At least, I did. This is a very satisfying watch, much more so than you would guess from reading a description of the plot.
Overall:
I’m excited about Best Actress at the Oscars this year. Everybody in the category would make a worthy winner. (That’s the way it’s supposed to be, and usually it is, I guess, but this is an unusually strong crop of engaging performances.) Risborough’s performance is brilliant, and the film is one of my favorite of the year. I’m excited to show it to my husband and my daughter.