Wildcat (2024)

3 1/2 Stars (out of 4)

Everything That Rises Must Converge

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

Ethan Hawke's fine depiction of the great author Flannery O'Connor, Wildcat is largely non-linear and avoids typical biopic trappings, instead concentrating on the rhythms of the artistic process and on capturing her voice in a visual way.

We meet author O'Connor (Maya Hawke) in 1950 in New York City as she struggles to complete her first novel, Wise Blood. She forms a connection with a professor, Cal Lowell (Philip Ettinger), but finds she doesn't fit in with academic social circles.

Later, she is diagnosed with Lupus and goes back home, to Georgia, to live with her mother (Laura Linney). As she works on the novel, she finishes several short stories. (These are performed in little vingettes by the same actors in different roles.) Throughout all of it, she wrestles mightily with the meaning of it all; what does it mean to write? And, through writing, can she achieve grace?

Directed by Hawke, who works with his daughter Maya as O'Connor, Wildcat doesn't do much to introduce the writer to viewers who aren't already familiar with her. In other words, it doesn't deal with ordinary biographical details, how she published her first story, etc.

It zeroes in on her two most important relationships, with professor Cal and her mother, and on the period in which she worked to finish her first novel (which also coincided with her Lupus diagnosis). But Hawke is more interested in how O'Connor's brain works, observing her in conversation, both with other literary thinkers and with her family, and especially — in a powerful sequence — speaking with a priest (a great Liam Neeson).

Perhaps being an author himself, having published several novels, Hawke is more intimate with the creative process. When Flannery writes, the stories come to life on the screen, sometimes slyly, unexpectedly, with Hawke and Linney playing the characters in them. Through these mini-movies, we get even more of an idea of O'Connor's voice, her concerns, and her prose. (It even opens with a fun trailer for a fictional black-and-white movie adapted from one of O'Connor's stories.)

Indeed, Wildcat is not a straightforward movie, and may be more challenging than most biopics, but its admirable achievement is that it depicts who O'Connor was rather than merely what she did.