‘Wildcat’ Review: Comfort to the Uncomfortable

Wildcat, starring Maya Hawke, directed by Ethan Hawke and written by Shelby Gaines and Ethan Hawke is the story of American author, Flannery O’Connor. Flannery O’Connor’s work has long been a staple of American collegiate literature requirements. Short stories, like “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” “Good Country People,” and “Revelation,” among others make the required reading list for English majors all over the country, including yours truly. 

As a freshman lit major, I first encountered Flannery O’Connor in my Intro to Interpreting Literature class. Upon first reading, I found O’Connor as did many —shocking, scandalous, and unexpectedly grim for a young woman from Georgia in the 1950s. Being a fellow Southerner, the settings in her stories were all too familiar to me. O’Connor’s work did not sit well with me at first. I found the darkness in her stories to be incongruous with the life of devout Catholicism that she lived. While I am not Catholic, I do take my own Christianity seriously. How could someone who shared my own religious views also create such dark stories? 

Then, I got older. The 2016 election happened. COVID-19 happened. All the insanity of 2020 happened. The January 6 insurrection happened. I found myself unmoored from the “Good Country People” I grew up around because their brand of Christianity looked nothing like the Christianity I saw in the Bible. The world was much darker than I once believed. 

Suddenly, the characters in Flannery O’Connor’s stories came alive for me. I understood Flannery in a new way. Her stories that once made me uncomfortable now comforted me. In William Nicholson’s play, Shadowlands, he gives C. S. Lewis the line, “We read to know we are not alone.” I read Flannery O’Connor’s stories and know I am not alone. 

Everything that Rises Must Converge

Wildcat is the story of Flannery O’Connor’s attempt to publish her first novel, her lupus diagnosis, and learning how to fit even when you don’t fit in. Wildcat tells Flannery’s story through her own stories. Maya Hawke plays Flannery, in addition to the lead character in each of her stories. Along with a host of high-caliber actors, this little indie flick is worth seeking out in your neck of the woods. Let’s break down the highlights of the film. 

Wild Cast

I knew I liked Maya Hawke very much as Robin in Stranger Things. I’ve not had the opportunity to see her other work, so I was looking forward to seeing her in Wildcat. Reader, I was ill-prepared for the sheer range that Maya possesses. Maya is prickly, introverted, and academic as Flannery. She nails Flannery’s look and even has her signature crooked teeth. As the characters in Flannery’s stories, she is seductive, charming, ignorant, demanding, aloof, simple, and positively stunning. I will let you construe which stories Wildcat references from those adjectives because I don’t want to give spoilers. Wildcat could serve as a long-form demo reel for Maya Hawke. This is her movie, and she owns it from start to finish. 

Our other main characters in the film are Laura Linney as Flannery’s mother, Regina. Philip Ettinger plays her friend, and potential love interest, Robert “Cal” Lowell. Other notables include Rafael Casal, Cooper Hoffman, Vincent D’Onofrio, Christine Dye, Liam Neeson, and Willa Fitzgerald, just to name a few. It’s a delight to spot each performer as they appear in Wildcat. I turned into the embodiment of the Leonardo DiCaprio pointing meme each time I spotted someone familiar during the film. Maya’s performance is worth the price of admission alone, but these high-caliber actors are the icing on the cake. 

The Problem of Pain

There is some truth in the concept that artists suffer for their art. Wildcat opens with a quote from Flannery O’Connor about hope, writing, and pain. For our purposes here, it is beneficial to get a bit more context for the quote. O’Connor says in Mystery and Manners” 

“Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay. I am always highly irritated by people who imply that writing fiction is an escape from reality. It is a plunge into reality and it is very shocking to the system. If the novelist is not sustained by hope of money, then he must be sustained by a hope of salvation, or he simply won’t survive the ordeal.”

Further, in the film, one of Flannery’s many characters describes writing as “…giving birth to a piano sideways.” I must have been the only writer in the theater because I was the only one who laughed out loud. Writing is difficult and laborious and occasionally hurts as much as it heals. Wildcat wrestles as much with Flannery’s writing as it does with her health and familial struggles. 

The Life You Save May Be Your Own

Flannery’s family simply doesn’t understand her. They recognize her intelligence and that she is an excellent writer, but are shocked by the content of her stories. It’s tough being a weird girl in a small town in the South, speaking from personal experience. O’Connor experiences emotional pain from the lack of understanding from her family and community. She experiences physical pain from her lupus diagnosis, which inhibits her ability to write as she would like.

Further, these different varieties of pain force her to reconcile her suffering with her faith. This struggle is the crux of the film and the ever-present theme in her writing. Wildcat portrays this well. The way the film wrestles with this tension is thoughtful and not candy-coated. The careful handling of the problem of pain makes Wildcat worth your time. 

Final Thoughts

Wildcat looks at themes of suffering, pain, and grace throughout Flannery O’Connor’s life and work. Flannery was a complicated person and made no pretense otherwise. Aesthetically, the sequences jumping between reality and the stories playing in Flannery’s head are reminiscent of the 2003 film, Big Fish. The role of pain and suffering is illustrated well in this manner. Wildcat highlights the tension between pain, art, and our collective humanity through the lens of one human — Flannery O’Connor.

Flannery O’Connor is a figure worth reading up on, as Wildcat only looks at a brief section of her life. Maya Hawke anchors Wildcat with her performance, and the film is bolstered by the excellent supporting cast and direction. If you want a film that is thoughtful, funny, and rooted in history, Wildcat is worth your time. Wildcat is a film that may bring some comfort if you are feeling the tension caused by the problem of pain and suffering. It did for me. I hope it does for you, too. Wildcat can perhaps be best summed up in Flannery O’Connor’s own words: “The truth does not change based on your ability to stomach it.” Truth does not change, but our relationship to truth does. 

Wildcat is in theaters now.