[yasr_overall_rating]
Elle has just gotten through breaking up with her girlfriend when Elle’s granddaughter Sage unexpectedly shows up needing $600 bucks before sundown. Temporarily broke, Grandma Elle and Sage spend the day trying to get their hands on the cash as their unannounced visits to old friends and flames end up rattling skeletons and digging up secrets.
Subtlety is usually lost on the activist, and make no mistake, “Grandma” remains activist to its core. It touches on most of the hot-button issues of the day including gay marriage, feminism and teen abortion. Writer-Director Paul Weitz even throws in a straw man (or woman) screaming anti-abortionist with a punch happy kid just in case you missed the point. The story is simple enough. Just after Elle Reid (Lily Tomlin), once a noteworthy feminist poet, heartlessly breaks up with her young girlfriend, Olivia (Judy Greer), whom she dated for four months, her teenage granddaughter, Sage (Julia Garner), shows up needing $600 to pay for the abortion she’d already scheduled for later that evening. Since neither has any money to speak of, they rush about town trying to borrow the money in time for the procedure.
Elle comes from a line of militant feminists (“I don’t hate men, I just don’t think they’re necessary”) who experienced the worst inequality had to offer. Her latent lesbianism compounded her experience until she found her soul mate in Violet. They spent 38 years together before Violet died 14 months prior to the story. She is a role tailor-made for Tomlin to play, and Tomlin tears through the film like an angry mama bear bent on doing right by Sage no matter the cost. Every ounce of the Lily Tomlin audiences have loved over the years shows up in a mere 80 minutes, and each minute mesmerizes. She shifts effortlessly from crass sarcasm to tender compassion to righteous indignation in minutes and delivers a performance so authentically open she saves what might have been dismissed as just another misanthropic old woman trope. But Elle is far from just a trope. She’s a living, breathing woman trying to get past a grief so deeply ingrained in her, it takes this one day “adventure” with Sage, reliving some of the hardest moments of her past, before she can begin to come to terms with it. Tomlin will surely get plenty of well deserved awards season attention for her performance.
An ensemble of good to excellent performances supports Tomlin. Garner spends a fair amount of the film in bewilderment doing what she’s told. As a confused and frightened teen, I suppose this kind of characterization can be expected, but it doesn’t ring nearly as true. Sage and Elle have some fine scenes together bonding and learning each other’s stories. Marcia Gay Harden makes an appearance as Elle’s biological daughter, Judy, reared by her and Violet. She inherits her mother’s headstrong personality, but misses the compassion she found in “Momma Vi.” Sam Elliott demonstrates his own vulnerability as Karl, Elle’s ex-husband, who’s been left embittered and torn by Elle in his own way. Of course, like all the men in this film, he has some deep-seeded flaws of his own. The ensemble’s chemistry flows from scene to scene without losing its strength, largely because of Tomlin’s incredible presence.
Director Paul Weitz overcomes much of the heavy handedness Weitz the screenwriter burdened the script with by moving his story along quickly. If any momentum were lost, it could have sunk the film, but he gives it no chance to slow down at all. Each moment of emotional depth flows freely from the supporting characters, while in Elle we watch her eyes soften, her cheeks relax, her voice lower gradually as the film moves. Whether this brilliant contrast came from Weitz or Tomlin, it makes all the difference in humanizing the truly foul person we are introduced to as the story begins. Weitz keeps his camera work economical, using mostly interior shots focused on the character interactions. His strength here is letting the environment reflect each new character’s personality. The various settings help tell the story as much as the costumes and even at times the dialogue. When the pieces fit together so seamlessly, nothing more need be added.
Weitz’s screenplay is one of the film’s greatest weaknesses and a strength at the same time. It provides the audience with plenty to cheer about, characters to care about and surprising humor. Overall, the experience of watching grandmother and granddaughter bond, and mom maybe learn a thing or two as well, is really satisfying. The snappy dialogue and interplay between characters charms in the best way possible. By movie’s end, I understood Elle, even if only a little, and respected the person she’d chosen to be. In the world of feminist liberalism he’s created, everything Elle does makes perfect sense. If that’s your world view, you’ll love it. But Weitz is preaching to the choir. Not everyone shares that world view or can sit through a film full of straw man arguments against the “other side.”
I know, conservatives do this all the time. True, but there’s a reason I haven’t seen a “Christian” or conservative film since “The Passion of the Christ.” We are polarized by straw man arguments because we’ve lost compassion and respect for those we disagree with. Just like Elle, we’re too damned angry by slights, perceived or real, to listen and think, really think about why we believe such evil about them. Oh, we can spout off a list of horrific deeds committed against humanity or God or ourselves personally, but is that really why we’re so angry at each other? As the great songwriter Bill Mallonee wrote in his song “Resplendent”-“My, my how loudly we plead our innocence long after we’ve made our contribution.”
“Grandma” is a very good film. It entertains, it angers, it provokes. It most definitely has something to say, which it says loudly and repeatedly. The acting and directing work in timely fashion to drive its points home. And Lily Tomlin is sheer perfection. So, for all my talk about heavy handedness, I recommend it if only to see such a master at work.
In select theaters including the Landmark Magnolia in Dallas and Cinemark West Plano September 4th
