Film:
Dolores Claiborne, 1995
Starring Kathy Bates, Jennifer Jason Leigh, David Strathairn, Christopher Plummer, John C. Reilly, and Judy Parfit.
Synopsis (from IMDB):
Dolores Claiborne works as a maid for a wealthy woman in remote Maine. When she is indicted for the elderly woman’s murder, Dolores’ daughter Selena returns from New York, where she has become a big-shot reporter. In the course of working out the details of what has happened, as well as some shady questions from the past and Selina’s troubled childhood, many difficult truths are revealed about their family’s domestic strife. This is cleverly portrayed with present reality shot in cool blue tones blending seamlessly into flashbacks shot in vivid color. As small town justice relentlessly grinds forward, surprises lie in store for the viewers
My Thoughts (SPOILERS!!):
I had seen this movie when it first came out years ago, but just recently caught it again on HBO. Since that time I have doubled in age and gained some perspective. See this movie, if you haven’t, because it’s really quite good. Stephen King wrote the part with Kathy Bates in mind after her stunning performance in Misery (1990).
This film challenges our perceptions and our thoughts of what justice is. It opens on an event that we can only hear but not fully see. Two women are arguing and then we see one fall down the stairs (we’ll discover later to be Vera), before the other soon runs after her (Dolores). She proceeds to run frantically to the kitchen in search of a weapon only to return with a rolling pin held high above her head. But she can’t do it, she stands there mustering the strength, the will, but can’t do it. Vera (Judy Parfit) passes on, and the door is opened by the mailman who spots Dolores (Kathy Bates).
This is the inciting incident, the incident that begins the inquest, the incident that colors our perception of who Dolores is and what she’s done, and the incident that drags Dolores’ daughter Selena (Jennifer Jason Leigh) back to Maine from New York City after 15 years away.
But is it the truth? Was it a crime?
Through out the film we will eventually find the answers to these questions, or at least a broader perspective in which to come to our own conclusions, but not before finding out a lot more about Dolores Claiborne and Selena St. George. And no, the name difference is not arbitrary, it is representative of the conflict between them that has kept them apart for so long.
“Is it possible for one member of a family to be subjected to the utmost misery and to abject poverty and for the rest of the family to be comfortable? It is impossible unless those members of the family be senseless, atrophied, inhospitable, unkind.” ~‘Abdu’l-Bahá
Nearly two decades before Dolores was involved in another incident, which was ruled an accident, though the chief investigator (Christopher Plummer) was sure was murder: the death of her husband (David Strathairn). Dolores husband was no prince. He was an abusive drunk. Selena, however, does not remember him that way. She remembers the good, and only that Dolores was somehow involved in his death and therefore responsible for destroying the family. Since then Selena has had a nervous breakdown and is on several medications, none of which seem to be keeping her fully stable.
But is this the truth? Was it Dolores who destroyed the family?
“In order to find truth we must give up our prejudices, our own small trivial notions; an open receptive mind is essential. If our chalice is full of self, there is no room in it for the water of life. The fact that we imagine ourselves to be right and everybody else wrong is the greatest of all obstacles in the path towards unity, and unity is essential if we would reach Truth, for Truth is one.” ~ ‘Abdu’l-Bahá
Dolores had worked hard for Vera Donovan for a long long time. She started at $40 a week and eventually was making $80 a week as a live-in maid/nurse. Yes, a whole whopping $0.20 an hour. It was hard labor and Vera was a demanding boss, so why did Dolores stay? Initially to make money to pay for Selena to go to college. Over time she had saved over $3,000.
She put up with Joe’s abuse for a while, but soon it became too much and she fought back. Joe had been sneaky though, never abusing her in front of Selena, but Dolores, defensive not sly, was caught by Selena having hit back, Joe’s face bloody. Selena, having only seen the end of the fight, thought Dolores was crazy, much like how the mailman must have in the first scene we saw.
Dolores became more crazy when Selena’s grades started dropping and she was getting moody and depressed. Selena was going through puberty and there must have been a boy involved. Except it wasn’t a boy, it was a man, it was Joe.
Dolores went straight to the bank to get the money she’d been saving so that she could take Selena and leave. Except the money was gone. Turns out Joe had found out about it and because it was a custodial account and he was the other parent, was able to access it.
Dolores: It’s because I’m a woman ain’t it? If it had been the other way around, if I had been the one passing out the ferry story, how I’d lost a passbook and asked for a new one… if I had been the one drawing out what took 11 years to put in… you would’ve called Joe.
This scene is indicative of the sexism in society, back then and now, just as the domestic abuse was and continues to be a problem not just in America but world wide.
“And among the teachings of Bahá’u’lláh is the equality of women and men. The world of humanity has two wings—one is women and the other men. Not until both wings are equally developed can the bird fly. Should one wing remain weak, flight is impossible.” ~ Abdu’l-Bahá
It is in this context, broken and alone, fearing the safety of her daughter and without the means to protect her, that Dolores falls apart in Vera’s living room. It is the first time her guard is let down in the entire movie and her vulnerability is exposed. It also is when her shift in personality from well-behaved and hard working, to bitchy and bitter takes shape. Vera councils her:
Vera Donovan: Husbands die every day, Dolores. Why… one is probably dying right now while you’re sitting here weeping. They die… and leave their wives their money. I should know, shouldn’t I? Sometimes they’re driving home from their mistress’ aparment and their brakes suddenly fail.
Vera Donovan: It’s a depressingly masculine world, Dolores.
Vera Donovan: Sometimes you have to be a high-riding bitch to survive. Sometimes being a bitch is all a woman has to hold onto.
So we see how Dolores could be driven to do what she did to her husband, but what exactly did she do? She supplied him with alcohol, but he was the one who chose to get drunk. She provoked him, but he was the one that chose violence. She led him to where the abandoned well was, but he fell in, she didn’t push him. She did choose not to help him out though.
Is it a crime to choose not to save someones life? We see reporters do it all the time when they film atrocities but do not get involved, but this is not the same as that. Is it the same as murder? Is leading someone to their death knowing it the same as killing someone?
Maybe this is why Dolores stayed so long in that awful job afterwards. She committed this deed to protect her daughter who only then despised her for it. In fact Selena had repressed the memory of her father’s sexual abuse so she also could not fathom what drove her mother to commit that act, an act nobody even had proof of but merely conjecture. There were no witnesses to her father’s death and he was a known drunk so it logically could’ve been an accident.
Also, Vera understoon Dolores and her problems the way nobody else had. This is also why it becomes clear that Dolores would not have murdered her, despite the $1.6 Million she stood to inherit. In the end we see that it was Vera who had thrown herself down the stairs.
Dolores Claiborne: [sobbing] Why? Why’d you do this, Vera?
Vera Donovan: Because I hate the smell of being old.
Vera then asked Dolores to help her, which spawned the frantic search for the rolling pin, but in the end Dolores couldn’t. There is a difference between passively setting up a scenario which could lead to a persons death and actively killing someone after all. And we are reminded that this is how the movie began, and this is the case the detective is prosecuting, not Joe St. George’s death 18 years prior:
Selena St. George: Eighteen years ago, my father drank a bottle of scotch and fell down a well. Detective Mackey didn’t think it was an accident, which is… why we’re here today.
Det. John Mackey: And what do you think, Selena?
Selena St. George: I think I owe you an apology. I called you a son of a *****. You said you thought we were a lot alike, and you were right. We both spent the past 18 years prosecuting this woman. We came out here- I know I did- believing she was guilty. We forgot this case is about Vera Donovan. Not my father.
Det. John Mackey: And what if it wasn’t an accident?
Det. John Mackey: Look. It’s been 18 years. I don’t know what this has done to you, but let me tell you, it’s consumed me. I have lived with this every day of my life. Every day. I was wrong and I won’t do it any more. And if I can say that, my God, can’t you?
Selena came to terms with what had happened, both to her and her father. She was able to finally forgive her mother because she could understand the motivation. As for the current death, she knew her mother would not have been capable.
“Divine civilization, however, so traineth every member of society that no one, with the exception of a negligible few, will undertake to commit a crime. There is thus a great difference between the prevention of crime through measures that are violent and retaliatory, and so training the people, and enlightening them, and spiritualizing them, that without any fear of punishment or vengeance to come, they will shun all criminal acts. They will, indeed, look upon the very commission of a crime as a great disgrace and in itself the harshest of punishments.” ~ ‘Abdu’l-Bahá
I feel like for Dolores this was the case. She did not want to do what she did, and she knew it was wrong, and it consumed not only her but her daughter for these 18 years. She punished herself through her bitterness and isolation. She serves as a warning that even crime committed for the most desperate and understandable of reasons is polluting to the spirit and soul. Maybe now with new found understanding between daughter and mother she can be forgiven and redeemed.
“O Lord! Have pity on these ignorant ones, and look upon them with the eye of forgiveness and pardon. Extinguish this fire, so that these dense clouds which obscure the horizon may be scattered, the Sun of Reality shine forth with the rays of conciliation, this intense gloom be dispelled and the resplendent light of peace shed its radiance upon all countries.”
~ ‘Abdu’l-Bahá
I find Dolores Claiborne to be an intriguing film that challenges us a lot. Dolores was treated with injustice and acted in desparation and I think that a lot of crime happens for this reason. What does this mean for our society? We must seek justice. Women need to be treated fairly. Children need to be protected. Joe St. George was a criminal who may never have been brought to justice, and while Dolores should not have taken the law into her own hands it is understandable as to how that impulse would arise.
Your Thoughts?
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