Dolores Claiborne (1995)

It is a performances centric movie

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Scrolling through "customers also watched" on Amazon Fire. Hey, this one's got a pretty good IMDB rating, what the heck, let's give it a shot.Am I ever glad I did. This is the best film I have seen in a very long time. Excellent story and absolutely superb acting across the board, and especially Kathy Bates.

Kathy Bates and Jennifer Jason Leigh are a mother and daughter team in "Dolores Claiborne" traumatized by the past and present. Dolores Claiborne aka Dolores St. George is a long-time resident of Little Tall Island in Maine. JJL is her daughter, Selena a troubled journalist. She is played by Ellen Muth as a teenager. Dolores works for this horrid rich woman named Vera Donavan (Judy Parfitt)who is very particular about how the chores around her huge mansion are done (i.e., mildew is grounds for firing, "6 pins, Dolores!"--for when Dolores hangs the laundry on the lines in front of the house. Dolores has no relief at home. Joe St. George, her alcoholic, brutal husband talks in a strong Maine accent with a slur to his speech. He abuses her by smacking her with a piece of wood. Dolores can't take it anymore and smashes him in the face with a vase. Selena sees this and her mother tells her to go to bed. Dolores defends herself with an ax and neither of them want to use it on the other. Dolores's misery doesn't end. After years of being Vera's housekeeper, she is demoted to being the woman's nurse. Vera is stroke ridden and she falls down the stairs. Vera begs Dolores to finish her off with a rolling pin and the mailman comes by thinking Dolores killed Vera. Detective Mackey played by the always great Christopher Plummer and an officer played by John C. Reilly come to Vera's house and put everything in plastic bags to keep the evidence intact.Pretty soon, Selena comes over because of a fax about the alleged murder she receives in New York City where she lives now. Selena is a prescription-drug abusing, chain smoking, troubled journalist who is quite bitter and wants nothing to do with her mother and past life on the island. Soon, it is revealed that Joe St. George was probably murdered by Dolores during a solar eclipse in the 1970s. Dolores found out he was stealing money from their daughter's bank account and that is not the real catalyst for Dolores's rage. She finds out from her their daughter that the father has been molesting Selena. Dolores makes Joe chase her across the lawn and he falls to his death in a hole in the yard the two of them didn't know about. Vera's death was also an accident because she fell down the stairs after a physical altercation with Dolores.All of the performers were excellent in this movie about trauma and coming to terms with the past. Dolores is played to perfection by Kathy Bates and JJL as Selena is also very good! Christopher Plummer as Detective Mackey is determined to see justice done and John C. Reilly in a dramatic role is a surprise as well. I was amazed by David Strathairn as Joe St. George. One year earlier he was Meryl Streep's wimpy, studious husband in "The River Wild" and now he is a complete total opposite as Joe St. George. It takes a lot of range for an actor to play a role that is a total 180 degrees from what he played earlier!

This film absolutely spoils the viewer for the first hour and fifty minutes. It really does screw up when it turns from a greatly constructed thriller from the mind behind the most terrifying novels that have sold million. Turns into a badly leaded, and cheaply constructed court room movie. A girl has to go to her hometown. In small pieces of sea-bedded land, in a small community. Where her hardworking mother has been arrested for killing someone. But when she returns, she opens a door to old memories, about nasty little things she had forgotten that had really happened. She hated and judicated her mother for it. Its a dramatic movie, that moves, loses and scares the viewer in ways the contemporary audience would'nt have expected from a King inspired story. Its ending is its only flaw. It dribbles on too long when the film should finished, but it had to tell what happens to the protagonists. Before that, it feels like a film directed by Sam Raimi with close ups and inventive shots of painted scenes and dark subject matter scenes have the contrast liquefied. And the film is always jumping into the past with injecting the colorful years back into the shot as it tells its story non-linearly in flashbacks.Its story is its attraction. So I will not spoil it in this review. But give you idea of what you're going into; get ready to be uncomfortable, both for an old film that has a slow start; and pathetic characters who wont be easy to like. Now to contradict that, this must the best casted film I've seen in awhile. Kathy Bates as Dolores Claiborne; she showed how good she is as a frighting number 1 fan in Stephen King's Misery and she is just as phenomenally entertaining in this film. Jennifer Jason Leigh is probably the worst casted member, she falls through most scene and makes it when its counts.But to be honest she playing a pretty messed up and broken, conflicted young woman in world where she has no control over what she wants or has any idea how bad thing really are. Christopher Plummer is easily the best performance and Judt Parfitt. But more memorable is the supporting role by John C Reiley; he's easy to dislike but makes the final scene a bit more bearable when his character finally makes sense.It has a cut-off small town in New England with each actor giving away that, with a borderline accent. It has two main plots, one about the past and redemption and revelation and the present that is like I said always coated in a dead dark and dramatic aesthetics that makes the well tolled tale more moving. A long time housekeeper is the main suspect to a murderer, but of course its not all that easy; its find by Selena (Jennifer Jason Leigh) that in fact they loved each other and even help each other in terrible moments in the past. Then the second plot is about Selena herself taking control of her life by reciting her abusive alcoholic father and accepting her mother has always been there for her. A very sweet film when you don't think about some moments that are really dark, but King and the director Taylor Hackford; mash up their story telling talent with some really great filmmaking. with scenes like this; when the character is effortlessly looking into the past without prompt to whether the audience is ready. Or this scene when the mirror resembles how ruined their lives are. And this just amazing looking transcendence scene from the second act to the final act with a polarizing moon eclipse.But again; the only thing that would stop me from watching this stylish mystery drama is the ending. It could have ended somewhere before the final moments, before Jason Leigh gave the whole second degree in an unshabby courtroom scene and makes the other actors seem like they're saying your ruining this film. But I digress, a nice film is a nice film. And Dolores Claiborne is a Stephen King film made by Sam Raimi -- that's what the film felt like for me. But more seriously its a drama film for dramatic narrative. And looks way too nice not work on some less hardhearted viewers.

It will grab you from the beginning, and hold your interest until the end.It is very moving.Not everyone can relate to poor, struggling, hard-working people while immersed in their usual aspect of life. I believe even dividend collectors, whose worst daily trial is the walk to the mailbox to collect their checks, "earned" off the backs of workers, can connect with this one.Interwoven is a story of repressed memory child abuse, and you are presented with a riveting tale that's horrific as well as compelling.Please give this one a try, even if you're not a Stephen King fan. You will be rewarded.