Shirley

For all her mas­tery of hor­ror, author Shirley Jack­son had a flair for arch humour that bor­dered on the camp. Her slen­der 1962 page-turn­er ​‘We Have Always Lived in the Cas­tle’ ends on an exchange between the Black­wood sis­ters that shows a deep irrev­er­ence for the macabre events that came before, and leaves the read­er smil­ing ruefully.

There are sim­i­lar tonal val­ues to Josephine Decker’s Shirley, an adap­ta­tion of Susan Scarf Merrell’s semi-fic­tion­al nov­el of the same name. Elis­a­beth Moss chan­nels a ghoul­ish pan­tomime ener­gy in the title role that, from an actress of her sub­tle­ty and breadth, is a delib­er­ate cre­ative choice. Shirley is not so much about the writer Shirley Jack­son as it is a con­coct­ed psy­chodra­ma infused by the qual­i­ties of her work, where the real and the imag­ined co-exist in queasy dishar­mo­ny, and women escape male dom­i­nance through use of an invent­ed secret language.

Shirley Jack­son died in her sleep in 1965 at the age of 48, hav­ing spent the final 20 years of her life in North Ben­ning­ton, Ver­mont, with her dis­loy­al hus­band Stan­ley Hyman. A lit­er­ary crit­ic for The New York­er, by this point he worked as a lec­tur­er at Ben­ning­ton Col­lege while the increas­ing­ly ago­ra­pho­bic Shirley stayed home wrestling her sto­ries onto the page. Shirley is set dur­ing the time that our anti­heroine is work­ing on an idea that would become the 1951 nov­el ​‘Hangsaman’, loose­ly based on the dis­ap­pear­ance of col­lege stu­dent Paula Jean Welder.

Paula may have been real, but Rose (Odessa Young) and Fred Nemser (Logan Ler­man) are fic­tion­al entry points to the clois­tered domes­tic world that Shirley and Stan­ley (Michael Stuhlbarg) inhab­it. The film opens on the fresh-faced young cou­ple sit­ting on a train to Ben­ning­ton. Rose is read­ing Jackson’s ​‘The Lot­tery’ in The New York­er – a short sto­ry that yield­ed record-break­ing amounts of read­er feed­back, much of it hate mail. Rose, how­ev­er, is so aroused that she seduces Fred to the bath­room for a quick­ie. After­wards she looks at her­self in mir­rored sur­faces. Deck­er cuts togeth­er shots by DoP Sturla Brandth Grøvlen in such a way that reflec­tions and real­i­ty blend, set­ting the tone for what is to come.

Decker’s fourth fea­ture is her first with­out reg­u­lar DoP Ash­ley Con­nor and her first direct­ing a script writ­ten by some­one oth­er than her­self, in this case Sarah Gub­bins (I Love Dick). The result is a fusion of styles that does not always cohere. With pre­vi­ous fea­tures But­ter on the Latch, Thou Wast Mild and Love­ly and Madeline’s Made­line, Deck­er devel­oped a trade­mark tech­nique of telling female-led sto­ries by plung­ing into the sens­es and sidelin­ing nar­ra­tives by cen­tring the chaot­ic inten­si­ty of feel­ing alive.

Shirley has a more con­ven­tion­al script, replete with sparkling lines of dia­logue, yet Decker’s taste for undo­ing the seams of char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion shows up in the film’s visu­al lan­guage, as the fre­net­ic, hand­held cam­era is thrown at the sub­jects as if try­ing to get under their skin. This is a film try­ing to wrig­gle out of the strait­jack­et of its own sto­ry, the bet­ter to reveal the sym­bi­ot­ic pas­sions with­in its two lead­ing ladies.

When Rose and Fred arrive at the Ben­ning­ton house, there is a par­ty in full swing. Stan­ley is out front play­ing mas­ter of cer­e­monies. Shirley fes­ters in an arm­chair inside, sur­round­ed by acolytes hang­ing on her every poi­so­nous word. The Nem­sers are sup­posed to stay for only a short spell, as Fred set­tles into his new post at the col­lege, but it doesn’t turn out that way. Stan­ley cajoles Rose into tak­ing on the role of the house­keep­er so she spends her days cooped up in the house with Shirley, while the men are on cam­pus all day and some­times all night.

Shirley cuts through the hero wor­ship com­ing from her ingénue house­guest with such bru­tal­i­ty that Rose tells Fred: ​“She’s a fuck­ing mon­ster.” Pedestal out of the way, up springs an inti­mate dynam­ic. Rose cooks, cleans, assists. She starts as a nan­ny, evolves into a friend and then it’s a short leap into some­thing more cre­ative­ly and erot­i­cal­ly inspir­ing. Their con­ver­sa­tions become Shirley’s drafts, nar­rat­ed by Moss, who envis­ages her newest cre­ation with Rose’s face. Metafic­tion­al nods to Jackson’s most famous sto­ries are every­where, and as her fic­tion was informed by details of her life, the result is an ever-nar­row­ing spi­ral of themes: a suc­ces­sion of Russ­ian Dolls full of lost girls, banal oppres­sors and mag­i­cal witchcraft.

Moss leans into teeth act­ing, snarling and smil­ing with gen­tle delir­i­um. Her lack of make-up, lank hair and ten­den­cy to hide in bed in a white night­dress con­trasts with Rose who looks every inch the fra­grant fac­ul­ty wife. Young injects this doll-like avatar with such vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and curios­i­ty that she is the rev­e­la­tion. Her char­ac­ter is a foil, there to bear wit­ness to the force of nature that is Shirley’s domes­tic life, yet she emerges on her own terms as the lost girl at the cen­tre of it all.

If Rose is Shirley’s pro­tag­o­nist then Stan­ley is her antag­o­nist. He is abom­inable one moment, charis­mat­ic the next. Michael Stuhlbarg’s per­for­mance is ever shift­ing. He is an ener­getic, nim­ble Rumpel­stilt­skin, wait­ing for his wife to spin gold, patro­n­is­ing her like a pre­co­cious child. She has the tal­ent. He has the social free­dom. They have an arrange­ment where­by he is allowed affairs. Nei­ther is inter­est­ed in leav­ing or improv­ing their tox­ic part­ner­ship. It is pre­sent­ed as inevitable. ​“Let’s pray for a boy,” Shirley whis­pers to Rose about her unborn child. ​“The world is too cru­el for girls.”

The resid­ual impres­sion is that these women are trapped and there’s noth­ing in their super­nat­ur­al under­stand­ing that changes this. The chord Deck­er plucks with Shirley is from the inte­ri­or world, where women’s wild ener­gies have the room to play out in full. It’s the same place from which fic­tion flows, and the thwart­ed can have their day to do with what­ev­er they will. Deck­er shows us the real cage and she shows us the imag­i­nary free­dom – a sanc­tu­ary that is weight­ed with more impor­tance than any real-life dev­as­ta­tion. As Shirley Jack­son wrote in one of her jour­nals: ​“Writ­ing is the way out.”

Shirley is released 30 Octo­ber. Read more in LWLies 86: The Shirley issue.