CANBERRA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL: This US independent is a Sundance minor prize-winner about an alcoholic primary school teacher. Please don’t stop reading there. It’s better than it sounds. Much better.
a surprisingly engaging tale
I admit that left to my own devices I would probably not have chosen to have seen the film at all, given it was screening at a festival where there were other, more obviously appealing choices on offer. Who really wants to sit through what sounds like it may well be a dutiful trudge through the mire of addiction? Haven’t we been there just a few too many times over the last few decades for there to be anything new to say? Even Half Nelson, the most recent US film to tackle this successfully (it was also about a teacher), was the kind of film for which you had to be – as they say – in the mood.
But having now sat through Smashed, I can confidently report back that missing it would have been a big mistake. This turns out to be a surprisingly engaging tale that finds much empathy and even humour for the situation of its troubled protagonist, Kate (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), a young married US teacher with a drink problem. Equally impressive is the way it does this without cheating on its important but difficult subject. That’s a difficult tightrope to walk but the film pulls it off without a stumble.
The tale starts with Kate puking in front of her class. We already know this is because she’s had a heavy night drinking, but when of her little darlings asks if she’s pregnant, she makes the mistake of lying. Kate later compounds the error by going for a pregnancy test and then lying to her principal and vice-principal about the negative result.
Now she’s caught in a trap of her own making – fearful of the consequences if she admits her lies, yet terrified by the fact that ultimately the truth will have to come out. Complicating things is her relationship with her husband, Charlie (Aaron Paul), a slacker whose wealthy parents provide a financial safety net for the pair of them. It’s a sometimes fiery relationship, thanks in part to Kate’s behaviour, yet they’re clearly
united by real love.
Much of the film’s success comes from Winstead’s lead performance, but credit also belongs to director James Ponsoldt and his co-writer Susan Burke for avoiding worthiness – an obvious trap for the 'social problem picture’ (one fallen straight into by the Oscar-winning Precious two or three years ago).
I didn’t previously know Winstead, but I suspect this performance is going to make her much more widely known (she’s listed as appearing in the next Die Hard and Captain America movies, though it remains to be seen how big those roles are). Kate is a challenging character to tackle, given her big emotional arc, but the performer manages to pull this off while making the character likeable even when she’s not doing very likable things.
Encouraged by her male vice-principal, who confesses that he has addiction problems in his recent past, Kate signs onto a 12-step program. This is kind of thing that usually brings out the cynicism in filmmakers (viz. Fight Club and Rabbit Hole) but Ponsoldt and Burke take it at face value – a potential way out of a dead-end.
Overall while Kate makes bad missteps, her ultimate journey is upwards. That sounds like an awfully trite story arc, but the film avoids that fate by making the character fight bitterly for her ultimate success. What we learn is that tragic situations need not have tragic endings to maintain their credibility and integrity.
