Citizen Ruth (1996)

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

Blistering performances.

"Citizen Ruth" is a rare example of a movie that refuses to give you a protagonist you can root for or empathize with. Sure, there are plenty of filmic "anti-heroes", charming rogues and cads and villains you either want to see win or want to see lose. The titular Ruth, played by Laura Dern, is one of few I can think of I didn't want to see at all.Ruth Stoops is a moronic, drug addled loser. Her only goal in life is money. Her drug of choice - inhalants - seems to have been chosen deliberately: we're familiar with the highly romanticized tales of lives wasted on heroin and cocaine. Spray paint doesn't have the same dubious glamour.Whereas the filmmakers made the right choice there, it was with the movie's other major motif - abortion - that I think they should have thought longer and harder. It doesn't surprise me that Alexander Payne said the movie isn't really about pro-life or pro-choice, but about fanaticism. However the choice of this topic just cuts too close to the bone for us to take a step back. In order for us to recognize fanaticism, we have to separate ourselves from the issue and see those involved for what they are. Whereas both sides of the debate in this movie are clearly fanatics, few will be able to watch it without agreeing with one side or the other. I think the filmmakers should have chosen a topic that is less controversial.I return now to the movie's protagonist. I guess the filmmakers should be congratulated for refusing to make her likable or even interesting. In doing so, however, they have demonstrated why so few movies take that route: her company starts to wear a little thin. You keep looking for a shade of humanity in her cruddy exterior, but no, there's none to be found.This movie was basically a warm-up for Payne's first triumph, 1999's "Election", which also really had no likable characters, but enough wit and directorial flair to keep it going.

Firstly, it's interesting how this film is structured and pans out as it develops. You get the impression to start with it's this heavy drama with difficult themes and an atmosphere too realistic that the film could really be considered 'entertaining'; interesting, but rather almost like an informative piece on grave contemporary social issues.Then I remembered the label 'comedy', remembered the pleasant-looking poster and thought there was a problem there. But as the story plays out, we're given a glimpse of what the principle point really is, and as that establishes progressively we're dropped into a much lighter atmosphere, all the while the plot thickens and the problems pile on for the characters. The film turns into a parody of its own theme and does it quite seamlessly, like as it progresses the story naturally exposes its ridiculous nature, that being the ridiculous caricature-like nature of human beings in their quest for interest and self-promotion.There are two sides and both are so caught up in their battle against the opponent they lose sight of the very subject (and person) they got involved with in the first place.The ending is very pleasantly casual and spontaneous and terribly dense with meaning without ever spelling it out whatsoever. A big change from overtly dramatic, spoon-fed morals during endings.Top notch stuff. Very good acting, all actors buy into their roles and the film entirely - and Alexander Payne great as always.8.25/10

Pitiful, bedraggled Ruth is a forlorn specimen of hopelessness with more than a dozen arrests for illegal inhalation. She has just been kicked out by her one-night boyfriend and turned away by her fed-up brother-in-law. The arresting cops already know her name. Now she's told she is pregnant. "You've been found to be an unfit mother four times!" a flabbergasted judge tells her. "Uh-uh," Ruth says. "Two times." The judge charges her with "felony criminal endangerment of a fetus," though submits in candor to drop the charges if she'll have an abortion. The displaced good intentions there are nothing compared to the ideological thicket that Ruth wanders into after her case becomes a national battleground for pro- and anti-abortion groups.Citizen Ruth, the feature debut of definitive contemporary film wit Alexander Payne, a filmmaker of rare intelligence who's on the short list of American directors with final cut rights for their films, is a satire with the reckless courage to take on both sides in the abortion debate. There are no positive characters in the film, certainly not Ruth, whose preferred state is oblivion, and who perks up only when both sides start making cash offers. Whereas almost every film has a market in mind, here is a movie with a little something to offend anyone who has a strong opinion on abortion.Who's left to market this movie to? Perhaps those diminishing figures who have a high regard for movies with audacity and sharpness, and do not demand to be gratified and bolstered by the characters on the screen. Some may find it too delineative to compensate more than a single viewing, but nevertheless a stimulating one-time wonder. Others see more ironic fine points upon multiple viewings. This makes it all the more valuable because what satire must do in order to work is take effective shots at both sides of whatever issue it holds to censure.The movie is an arcade of finely honed satiric sketches. Thrown into jail, Ruth finds herself sharing the same cell with hymn-singing "Baby Savers" who have been jailed after a protest at an abortion clinic. She is promptly taken under the wings of Kurtwood Smith and Mary Kay Place, who bring her home to an innocent milieu, innocent, i.e., until she finds their son's airplane glue. Gail oscillates between worship of life and acid disputes with her teenage daughter, who sooner or later helps Ruth slip away to a party.One of the Baby Savers is Swoozie Kurtz, who uncovers herself as a mole for the pro-choice side, and whisks Ruth off to the wilderness retreat she shares with her lesbian lover, Rachel, who sings to the moon. They organize for Ruth to have an abortion, however already the Baby Savers have issued a national alert, the network crews are camped out in the parking lot, and the national leaders for both sides have flown into Tulsa to make their stands.Shot in Nebraska just like Payne's exceedingly brilliant subsequent films Election and About Schmidt, Payne has a good eye for the character qualities of fanatics with the compulsion to control other people's lives. The leader of the pro-choice side, played by Tippi Hedren, is rendered as so hip and shrewd that you know it's a disguise for indescribable skeletons in the closet. And the leader of the pro-lifers is played by Burt Reynolds as a sloganeering fraud who glorifies the "American family values" crap while retaining a boy toy on his payroll.There is nerve in the determination to make Ruth an unredeemed dope-head whose sole impulse is to go for the cash. Though unjustifiably careless and ignorant as Ruth is, she becomes extremely funny via Payne's fitting of her into such incongruous surroundings as much as Laura Dern's hysterical performance. Attesting herself as a superb physical comedian, the in-shape and gangly Dern lashes and yells her way through the catastrophe that explodes over her quandary. And yet with momentous satirical elegance, this definitive sleeper watches how both sides exploit this oblivious nonentity's soul, or lack thereof, in a variety of endeavors to forcibly convey their stance to the American public. I have misgivings that the two sides in the debate would in reality undertake a bidding war, but that's what satire is for: To take reality and broaden it into farce.The movie sheds light on the ways in which mainstream films condition us to count on formula endings. Most movies are made with the credence that no one in the audience can be counted on to think about more than one concept at a time, at the very most. I'm happily bowled over when it arises that there will be no "good side" and "bad side" in the mêlée over Ruth, and astonished when it seems that the movie will not turn up securely with a resolution to satisfy everyone. Some states of affairs, Payne appear to be contending, just cannot be reconciled to everyone's liking. Perhaps, for some viewers, that will make this not a comedy at all.

The more I view Payne's pictures, the more I see them as a kind of Requiem, or Elegy, for humanity in the setting of Nebraska and the young and old who populate Omaha. Payne's first 3 films are perhaps valentines to his birthplace. I went back to review Citizen Ruth and About Schmitt, and found myself amazed in the subtle execution of loss and despair in the stories and characters. Alexander Payne has a good thing going in his work. In Citizen Ruth, Election and About Schmidt we perhaps have a trilogy that arcs through the life cycle of a human being.. Citizen Ruth...conception, birth and childhood. Ruth seems to embody all three...physically and emotionally (pregnant, but child-like in mind and action). The subtle sub-plots involving the child of "Life Savers" Norm and Gail Stoney (played by Sebastian Anzaldo III) is possibly the saddest depiction of a loss of innocence I have ever seen in a film, worthy of Stanley Kubrick (who filmed a similar theme in the first half of Full Metal Jacket). When Ruth hits the child, suddenly the wind is also knocked out of the film. The illusion of "choice" in the conception and birth process of mortal existence is all over this film. Election...youth and the middle aged... The youth struggle to grow up and the middle aged reach for a happiness lost in youth. I think Reese Witherspoon's character, Tracy Flick, goes through a steep learning curve, a process of change and understanding that benefits her and helps her come to terms with her loneliness, however damaged she may still be. She actually comes out better than the other characters IMO. Mr. McCallister, in contrast, spirals out of control...his inner creepy crawlies, hidden in the dark corners of a classroom for years, are suddenly brought out by the searing light of Tracy Flick. About Schmidt...old age and death. Regrets and redemption by proxy (the best gifts can be given and received in ways that we can never imagine...without us even knowing about it). Death is seen quite early in the film...and the bell tolls for Warren's life(as the clock strikes 5pm to announce Warren's retirement). While Warren is going through crisis and he desperately tries to "make a difference" by saving his daughter from marrying a loser, a 6 year old child in Africa is deeply affected by Warren's $22 a month donation. Warren is redeemed? I think Warren is redeemed after his Wedding reception speech earlier...it is also his burial...his last will and testament. The 6 year child's drawing is a sign that the "circle of life" will begin again...brand spanking' new. These films are so amazing I feel as if I'm participating in each. Great cinema.