Being an avowed Catholic and a film reviewer means that sometimes you encounter something that is difficult to fully digest on a number of levels.  I am going to do my best to talk about Wildcat (2023), a biopic about devout Catholic author Mary Flannery O’Connor (Maya Hawke), known more widely by her pen name Flannery O’Connor.  Given the little that I knew about her going into the film, and what I learned from it, I suspect there are layers to why she went by just Flannery.  Since her family called her Mary, that is what I am going to use.  As we go along, hopefully you will see why I am doing so.  What I will say for now is that, thankfully, Faith has a central role in the film and seems to be a key part of helping her cope with difficulties in her life.  This is also going to be a difficult movie to discuss as it is meant to bring you into her thinking behind some of her stories.  It gives the plot a somewhat disjointed flow, which would normally annoy me.  What kept my interest is some of the most incredible testaments to Faith that I have encountered from Hollywood.  I hope that is enough of a teaser to keep you reading.

One of the themes of Mary’s work is men being of questionable quality, which is the subject of the first short story we see played out in Wildcat.  Males are almost invariably violent, and this is something her editor reacts to, wondering if she might change her tone.  Initially, she takes well to what she refers to as constructive criticism, but returns promptly to the office to protest that she has a voice and that she aims to use it.  This takes place in New York City, and she is about to board a train to return to her native Georgia.  Seeing her off is Robert “Cal” Lowell (Philip Ettinger), a poet, mentor, and someone she hopes is in love with her.  While it is clear that there is affection between them, as she is about to leave, he says that they will not marry.  With this news, Mary endures a cold trip south, dreaming up more tales during the trek. Things do not improve when she is picked up from the station by her mother, Regina O’Connor (Laura Linney).  As an aside for further context, Regina is the mother Mary seems to imagine in all her writings, for better or worse.  Anyway, Regina takes a look at the condition of her daughter and declares that Mary needs to see the doctor at once.  Mary protests, wanting a priest instead.  I applaud the author for her Catholicity, but I would like to point out that we are not against modern medicine.  Mary’s resistance to treatment, though, is part of her overall cantankerous attitude towards being back in Georgia instead of New York with Cal.  The bad news keeps coming when she learns that she has lupus, the disease that killed her father.  As such, there will be no more ventures up north.  Still, she does have her writing, which is dear to her.  At this point, we learn how she first began to hone her writing abilities at the University of Iowa, where she earned awards for her works of fiction.  This is also where she meets Cal, although he seems to be the only one able to put up with her nature.  This is underscored when he convinces her to come to a dinner party he is hosting and her odd mannerisms further isolate her.  There is a wonderful Catholic moment when she rebuffs a reveler who tries to suggest that Jesus’ presence in the Eucharist is symbolic, saying if that is the case, then the heck with it before getting up to leave.  She does not believe this as her private and public Spiritual life clearly demonstrate, and thankfully the rest of the movie supports this idea.  For example, she is never far from her Rosary.  At any rate, we get back to where we left off before this flashback, and we learn that Cal will not be visiting her in Georgia as she hoped.  This may seem odd to say, but the low point comes when she attempts to continue climbing the stairs to her room with her crutches, but slips and falls, taking a nasty tumble.  During her convalescence she is visited by her priest, Father Flynn (Liam Neeson).  Asking her mom to leave her alone with him, Mary pours out her soul to Father Flynn.  Whether it is intended as such or not, I see this as the climax of the film.  It is not an official Confession, but it sure sounds like one.  During it, she talks about her love of writing, but how she worries that what she puts to paper is offensive to God.  She feels alone, too, wanting to experience God’s grace but feeling blocked from it.  This is something that comes up in spiritual direction a lot, and Father Flynn handles it like a pro.  Since he is a priest, I am sure it is all stuff he has heard before, anyway.  As for her work, he asks if she feels that her words are honest, and that if they are, the rest is up to God.  There is a lot behind these words, and I cannot claim to have the depth of knowledge of O’Connor’s stories to any degree.  Yet, the priest’s advice seems to be what sets her mind at ease, and she finds what she needs to continue writing.

Gosh, as I moved along describing Wildcat, I increasingly realized that nothing I could say about it would do it justice.  For example, I barely touched on the short stories that are sprinkled into the narrative.  They are meant to be illustrative of different moments in her life.  Further, while Catholicism is present in the movie, it is arguably more like window dressing.  There is the aforementioned Rosary, the statue of the Virgin Mary (which I am guessing Mary felt an affinity to on a number of levels), and her going to Mass.  The Faith is a great tool to convey Christianity without needing to use a lot of words.  I also know in the introduction I asserted that it contains some of the most incredible expressions of Faith I have ever encountered from Hollywood.  I stand by that statement, though I wonder if general audiences took them as bland spiritual sayings rather than what they truly are: the yearnings of a soul longing for God.  This is something intrinsic to all of us.  Unfortunately, too many of us do not care to acknowledge it.  Mary speaks to this very issue when she refers to how a good portion of Christians view church as a “poor man’s insurance policy.”  In other words, they go to church to cover themselves in the afterlife rather than truly, devoutly seeking a relationship with God.  Mary falls into the latter of these categories.  While the film does adequate justice to this notion, I am still unsure if either of the Hawkes (Maya’s father, Ethan Hawke, wrote and directed it) realized what the material they used really meant.  Aside from Mary’s work, they also drew quotes from her prayer journal.  Such diaries are not something kept by most casual Christians, regardless of their sect.  Mary also went to daily Mass.  This is hinted at, but it takes more research on her life to learn the extent of her devotion.  This is not something required of Catholics, and especially these days, most pastors are pleased to just see people in the pews on Sundays.  Apparently, going to receive the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist every day was a part of her religious routine that included writing and reading, keeping it up nearly until the day she died at the young age of thirty-nine.  I bring this all up because I wish to emphasize, perhaps more so than you see in the film, the centrality of Catholicism in Mary’s life.  She was by no means perfect, and her racism, while not outrageous, was sadly in keeping with the attitudes of her day.  Yet, this, too, is something with which she struggled, and the only place she knew to find any kind of healing in the fullest sense of the word was in His Church.

Remarkably, Flannery O’Connor is one of the most respected authors of the twentieth century, and Wildcat attempts to show you why this was the case.  It is inspiring and rich for me, personally, but also tragic on a broader level.  I want my Catholic heroes to be perfect, and that was not Mary.  Still, as the cliché goes, who is?  What separates her is she sought her guidance from the correct source, and I pray you come to do the same.  It is also heroic how she dealt with her condition.  One might not call her endurance of suffering Christ-like, but it was definitely a Cross to bear.  Overall, I strongly recommend this one.