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| Courtesy of Sony Pictures |
Conservationist and
zoologist Delia Owens’ 2018 debut novel Where
the Crawdads Sing, a deeply Southern fried North Carolinian set cross
between coming-of-age memoir and murder mystery, became a major best seller and
captured the hearts and minds of readers globally. With its tale of an abandoned young girl who
survives living alone in the marshes before being accused and tried for a crime
involving the death of a local golden boy, the novel’s dual narrative structure
telling the girl’s story in flashback was plainly rife with cinematic
possibilities. Two years into the
pandemic, now here is writer-director Olivia Newman’s big screen adaptation
which provides moviegoers with one of the most refreshing female-led tales of
life in the South since Fried Green
Tomatoes.
Kya (Daisy Edgar-Jones)
is on trial for the murder of preppy local quarterback Chase Andrews (Harris
Dickinson), with Tom Milton (David Straithairn) appointed as her defense
attorney. To help build her case, Kya tells
Milton of her past, flashing back to her childhood in 1953 in a North Carolina
marsh living with her parents and older siblings. After the abusive alcoholic father gambles
their life savings away, mother and siblings fly the coup leaving Kya with her
father before he too leaves Kya to her own devices at the age of seven. Fending for herself she sells mussels to a
local grocery store and soon adopts the moniker of being the “Marsh Girl”,
becoming a naturalist in the process.
Visually between the
locations shot in New Orleans and Louisiana in widescreen by Polly Morgan, Where
the Crawdads Sing is one of the prettiest looking pictures of 2022
easily. More than anything, the
cinematography and setting depict the marsh as a kind of undiscovered utopia you
easily find yourself getting lost in. Painterly and striking, some of the film's best passages consist purely of the camera gazing over the beautiful marshy swampy landscape, as though we the viewer with the film and its protagonist are becoming one with nature.
Then there’s the soundtrack which includes not only a compelling
original score by Mychael Danna but also sports an original song by Taylor
Swift inspired by her reading the book itself before seeing a frame of footage,
creating an emotional soundscape that radiates from being nerve wracking to
uplifting. The ensemble cast is
generally good with Straithairn being the film’s veteran cast member, though
make no mistake this is largely Daisy Edgar-Jones’ one woman show of a fierce
and intelligent survivor thriving in the most unlikely of places in the deep
South.
Quasi-murder mystery
thriller, mostly a Southern Gothic romance ala Nick Cassavetes’ The Notebook
with just a hint of Nell sprinkled in, Where the Crawdads Sing is
again the modern post-pandemic answer to Fried Green Tomatoes, telling a
distinctly regional story with a universally appealing love story at its
epicenter. Mostly aided by a strong
central performance by Daisy Edgar-Jones who makes the film’s resourceful
heroine and storyteller a compelling figure, the film is a refreshing return to
down-to-Earth female driven dramas with a picturesque marshy backdrop for its
setting.
Though the courtroom scenery is
old hat if not a narrative contrivance and though the Southern tropes and terrain trudged across are familiar, the look at a young woman’s life
surviving alone in the marsh is a cinematic vision you rarely seen from Hollywood
anymore. Given the film’s surprising box
office success, it’s fair to say audiences have been eager for this kind of
romantic drama for awhile.
--Andrew Kotwicki
