
Wildcat Theatrical Release Poster / Wikimedia Commons
CV NEWS FEED // “Wildcat,” a film by the famous father-daughter duo Maya and Ethan Hawke, may provoke a resurgence in popularity for the renowned, yet difficult-to-place, Catholic Southern Gothic literary prowess Flannery O’Connor.
“To the young generations, Flannery will be speaking in an unfamiliar dialect, but I think they will get the oddness of her,” wrote independent columnist Sheryl Collmer in a May 3 review for Crisis Magazine.
The semi-autobiographical, semi-fictional indie film on O’Connor’s life and works made its debut in September 2023 at the 50th Telluride Film Festival and opened at theatres in New York and Los Angeles on May 3.
A national rollout is expected in the coming months.
“The dynamics of the post-Christian culture drive young people inward, where they became more acutely aware of their differences and isolation, painfully so,” Collmer observed. “The outrageous, eccentric, crippled characters will call to them.”
The Hawkes made their first appearance to promote the movie on an episode of “Bishop Barron Presents” in September 2023. They described the relationship between reality and grace in the film, as well as faith and art.
Ethan Hawke emphasized that O’Connor’s oeuvre does not do what the majority of readers and, by extension, mainstream culture, want. Instead, he said, O’Connor’s stories are like “spiritual art,” with a rigorous examination of reality.
Echoing Hawke’s assessment in her review, Collmer pointed out that at the time O’Connor was alive, “she already perceived that the world had lost the sacramental view of reality; that is, the ability to see the supernatural in the natural.”
She continued:
In her stories, grace arrives so disguised you almost miss it, because it’s not a pretty thing. Terrible characters are not abruptly made Tide-clean. Grace meets the characters where they are, and where they are in Flannery World is usually a gritty, squalid place.
The “prize’” of the film, Collmer asserts, is its “provocative” introduction of O’Connor’s bizarre, unconventional, and truth-filled work to younger generations who might have never heard of her, and are unlikely to encounter her works in school.
