Why I love Kathy Bates’ performance in Misery | Little White Lies

In Praise Of

Why I love Kathy Bates’ per­for­mance in Misery

28 Jun 2022

Words by Lucy Vipond

Portrait of a woman with long brown hair and a pensive expression, set against a dark background.
Portrait of a woman with long brown hair and a pensive expression, set against a dark background.
In her break­through lead role, Bates plays a reclu­sive nurse who takes her fan­dom to hor­ri­fy­ing extremes.

Con­tent in her spin­ster­hood, a delu­sion­al roman­ti­cist and the num­ber one fan of romance nov­el­ist Paul Shel­don, Kathy Bates invites the audi­ence to under­es­ti­mate her as Annie Wilkes in Rob Reiner’s 1990 cham­ber thriller, Mis­ery. In her remote Col­orado cab­in, she nur­tures her favourite author, Paul Shel­don (played by James Caan), back to health after res­cu­ing him in a bliz­zard. Over the course of the film, she turns from warm to volatile and back again until final­ly reach­ing break­ing point.

Adapt­ed from Stephen King’s 1987 nov­el of the same name, Mis­ery serves as an alle­go­ry for the author’s drug use, mak­ing Annie his most per­son­al ghoul. For this rea­son, King was pro­tec­tive of his intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty and unwill­ing to sell the film rights to any­one. But Rein­er, who pre­vi­ous­ly brought Stand by Me (based on King’s novel­la The Body’) to the screen, was an excep­tion. (Rein­er wasn’t the only per­son King would be keen to work with again; fol­low­ing Mis­ery he wrote Dolores Clai­borne’ in 1992 with Bates’ in mind.)

In her quaint guest bed­room, Annie tends to her bedrid­den hero like an injured bird, his pur­ple legs strapped in makeshift splints. In her dul­cet voice she tells him while spoon-feed­ing him that the roads are blocked and the phone lines are down. She appears benign and unas­sum­ing at first, albeit a source of annoy­ance for her patient.

Her fem­i­nin­i­ty is seen as pathet­ic; she wor­ships Paul’s trashy Mis­ery’ book series, is offend­ed by pro­fan­i­ty, and watch­es TV dat­ing shows. Annie is more akin to Bette Davis’ mad child-adult in psy­cho-bid­dy clas­sic What Ever Hap­pened to Baby Jane? than the femme fatales of erot­ic thrillers past, or those embraced by fem­i­nists like Car­rie – Bri­an De Palma’s 1976 hor­ror about male fear of the female body, has become a sym­bol of female rage. In fact, what Bates had to work with was a blank slate. She was 41 at the time of film­ing; women of her age were usu­al­ly invis­i­ble on screen, rarely the lead role, and she often plays into this.

You’ll nev­er know the fear of los­ing some­one like you if you’re some­one like me,” she tells Paul as he shows signs of recov­ery. Her eyes heavy and her face drained of colour, she draws a gun from her pock­et. In this moment, she’s most dif­fi­cult to read, and shows a rare glimpse of vulnerability.

Most of the film is car­ried by Bates and Caan, with Paul large­ly react­ing to and appeas­ing Annie’s behav­iour. When she reads the final instal­ment of his series, in which her beloved Mis­ery dies, she admits that he is her pris­on­er, not patient, and forces him to write one more nov­el: Misery’s Return.

With the help of Reiner’s cam­er­a­work, Bates’ per­for­mance is suf­fo­cat­ing. He shoots her from below, clos­ing in on her face in moments of aggra­va­tion which con­torts as her voice turns from sooth­ing to deranged. She deliv­ers her dia­logue like a mono­logue before return­ing to her plain, baby-talk inflect­ed speech (“Cock-a-doo­d­ie,” Oogie,” Oh, pooh,” Did I do good?”).

Annie’s dis­cov­ery of the hair clip Paul has been using to escape from his room is the cat­a­lyst for her most reck­less melt­down. In the infa­mous hob­bling scene’, she ties Paul down, places a piece of wood between his ankles, and breaks them both with a mal­let. She ratio­nalis­es her actions to him and smiles in her pseu­do-mater­nal man­ner. A façade fur­ther dimin­ished by Paul’s ear­li­er dis­cov­ery: news­pa­per cut­tings of Annie on tri­al for mur­der­ing numer­ous infants in the infir­mary. Mis­ery’ quotes used by Annie through­out the case brings the town’s sher­iff to the cabin.

There are sparks of humour in Bates’ per­for­mance, too, as she waltzes around after read­ing of Misery’s res­ur­rec­tion and announces she will play her Lib­er­ace records. Or when she wild­ly snorts at her pig – named after the book’s hero­ine. Yet Bates’ Annie doesn’t stray into camp ter­ri­to­ry despite the overt­ly sus­pense­ful music that sound­tracks much of her rage. She plays the part with just the right amount of restraint, enough so that you always know she is a threat, while keep­ing you appre­hen­sive about her next move.

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