MIFF Session 9: SHIRLEY

Rose and Fred are newlyweds who turn up at the household of celebrated writer Shirley Jackson and her husband Stanley, college professor and literary critic. The couple move in until they can find their own home and Fred's academic career can get a good start. What follows is a version of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf for depressives as the blocked writer stirs to find amusement and then inspiration in manipulating the young couple. Stanley parades and philanders, stifling the ambition of his own protege, Fred. Rose becomes fascinated by Shirley and begins her own invasion.

Fiction based on historical events should not serve the timeline. I don't mean that it should not be true (truth, however abstract, must be its purpose). I do mean that it should not admit events into its own timeline just because they happened. Most biopics ignore this notion and play out like pageants, leaving the interrogation of the life in question behind the mask of worth. Exceptions are rare but telling. Amadeus plays out as mythology, pitting one figure against another, each representing something about their art and creativity in general, ending in a showdown of the worldly and divine. This is not the place to begin a biographical study of the composer but it offers great insight into the mind and motives of a skilled mediocrity (its narrator, Salieri). Nowhere Boy about a teenage John Lennon takes care to omit the name of the band he is forming by the end of the story: that he became famous despite and/or because of the emotional torment of his youth is what lives on the screen and the images of the fame serve an end credit sequence.

Shirley comes from this kind of place. Her famous short story The Lottery is mentioned in several scenes (including the opening where it's spoiled) but she, as yet has not written a novel. More intriguingly, she is on the trail of a missing student from the local college from a few years before. In a moment of communion Rose offers an insight into the case that lights the moribund Shirley's eyes. These are characters in a story first and foremost. We are given no signposts to particular works from Jackson's output (no scenes where she is served by a timid clerk named Nell or meets a bestial college wife called Theo) as the idea of a writer crawling from the slough of despond through the opportunity to exercise power over another after years of dominance by her husband (which sent her to the slough to begin with).

These are the things that give this tale of sustained powerplay its darkened mood and near Gothic atmosphere. As such it performs a far better ground to approach an understanding of the writer of such iconic horror tales. Elizabeth Moss, the world's go to character actor, brings the light of rage into Shirley Jackson, one who knew the deadliest blows are dealt in embraces.