In Wildcat, the drama about Flannery O’Connor directed by Ethan Hawke and premiered at the Telluride Film Festival, a thoughtless act by a smug white woman triggers a powerful scene that sheds light on the issue of privilege and race. The film intercuts between O’Connor’s real biography as she battled lupus and pursued a literary career, and scenes from her acclaimed stories such as “The Life You Save Might Be Your Own,” “Parker’s Back,” and “Revelation.” O’Connor, known for her tart, anti-racist parables as well as explorations of her Catholic faith, has recently come under scrutiny for racist comments she made in her personal writings.
Despite the revelation of her past racism, the filmmakers saw potential in exploring O’Connor’s life and work. Ethan Hawke explains, “There’s this kind of pervasive thought right now that we’re just not going to talk about things that are hurtful and angry. And then they just fester in a closet. I came to see [O’Connor] as kind of like if you were studying this beautiful tree. It grew in the Jim Crow South, that is where she was fed and raised. We were studying a tree that is magnificent, but that is where it grew. And she looked at it all, and she looked at it really hard, but she is of it.”
The genesis of Wildcat came from Maya Hawke’s high school English assignments to read O’Connor. Maya, the daughter of Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman, found in O’Connor a kindred spirit and a source of inspiration. At the age of 15, she came across O’Connor’s A Prayer Journal, in which the young author grappled with her desire for greatness and her fear of not achieving it. Maya even delivered a monologue from A Prayer Journal as part of her audition for Julliard. After starring in Stranger Things, Maya met with Joe Goodman, the rights holder to O’Connor’s life and works, hoping to option A Prayer Journal. Maya enlisted the help of her father and his producing partner and wife, Ryan, and Ethan saw the potential to tell a larger story about O’Connor’s life. He began writing the script with Shelby Gaines, using O’Connor’s letters, stories, and her own writing to create a portrait of the author.
Wildcat explores the many ways in which O’Connor was an outsider in her time, from being a Catholic in the Protestant South to a person with a disability due to lupus, and a Northern-educated woman. Laura Linney, who plays the role of Regina O’Connor, Flannery’s mother, remarks, “She was already a weird peacock in her own existence, So, it makes sense that she would approach all of these issues the way that she did, with such verve and such a precise imagination and really by sticking her finger in a light socket.”
Despite the ongoing actors strike, the producers of Wildcat signed an interim agreement with the Screen Actors Guild to promote the film at Telluride. Ethan Hawke expresses his satisfaction with this decision, stating, “I am happy not selling this movie to somebody that doesn’t meet what SAG is asking for. If you spent $60 million on a movie and you have aspirations of everybody in the world seeing it and having to make lunch boxes out of the movie, that’s a different goal. This is a very adventurous movie. It’s also a little punk.”
In conclusion, Wildcat delves into the life and work of Flannery O’Connor, a complex figure in American literature. The film explores her evolution on the subject of race, highlighting both her insightful anti-racist parables and her own history of racism. Through intercutting between O’Connor’s biography and scenes from her stories, Wildcat presents a portrait of a woman who faced multiple challenges as an outsider in her era. While O’Connor’s past racism raises questions, the filmmakers aim to shed light on her upbringing and environment in the Jim Crow South and the profound impact they had on her writing. Wildcat is not simply a biopic but a thought-provoking exploration of a complicated artist and the themes she grappled with in her work.