Movie Review - 'The Stone Angel'

The Stone Angel

Starring Ellen Burstyn, Christine Horne, and Cole Hauser
Directed by Kari Skogland
Rated R

The Stone Angel by Margaret Laurence is a classic, slightly controversial book, chronicling a few generations in the Shipley clan in a fictional town in Manitoba through the eyes of its matriarch. It looks back over the life of Hagar Shipley (played in the film by Ellen Burstyn and, in her youth, Christine Horne), who now in her 90s, is resisting her family's push to get her into a nursing home, for the reasons that people would naturally resist that move.

The story has the dual timeline of the present day events and sprinkled in with Hagar's eventful past. The Notebook would be a good comparison, at least as a general introduction. But applying its story, themes, and characters into a two-hour film proves to be too much for director Kari Skogland, who tries her damndest but comes up short.

It's no fault of the performers, though; Burstyn provides her typical day at the office, which is to say, she's reason enough to see the film. And while it's a scary prospect to play an actress of such power as a younger woman, Horne does a terrific job, although her take on the character is slightly more sensual, less prickly. Movies that have characters playing double duty are hard to pull off. I thought it was one of the absolute triumphs of Atonement last years, where three actresses are shown playing the same role, and it's similarly effective here.

There's an Ellen Page sighting in The Stone Angel, although I would think it would be more of a primary role. That statement actually underscores the major problem with the movie, which is otherwise pretty good. I talk about efficiency all the time when it comes to screenplays, and it's a tough thing to achieve when you adapt a book, particularly when you're Canadian and you're fitting one of that country's literary achievements into two hours. Novels have time to explore whomever or whatever for how ever long they so choose. Movies, like it or not, have time limits. And if your source material covers several decades and weaves in dozens of characters, it's tough to know what to leave in and what to take out. But you can't possibly get everything into the movie, so editing can be a burdensome and heartbreak process.

But if the movie's better for it, than it's absolutely worth it. Unfortunately, The Stone Angel is not all the better for it; there's trepidation to streamline the journey of Hagar Shipley, and it shakes up the real backbone of the story and almost spoils two arresting central performances.