cyphomandra

At the center of the movie is the Brass family, and at the center of the family is patriarch Bill, played by the always excellent David Strathairn. Bill owns a small business where his son David (Will Pullen) is the accountant, and Bill is beginning to suspect that David’s books – his own personal moral books, not the company’s – are not in order. David and his wife Tammy (Jane Levy) live in the guest house adjacent to the home of Bill and his wife, Venida (Celia Weston, the marvelous Southern character actress who provides most of the humor in the movie). Bill adores his daughter-in-law Tammy, and he fears that his son is cheating on her. The movie is not a mystery where David doggedly unravels the unpleasant truth. No, the movie is about David and his family simply trying to figure out what’s going on and what they should do, just as we all try to do, every day.

A Little Prayer begins with singing, a gorgeous hymn we hear as the camera tracks down a suburban street and comes to the Brass’s house. Someone in the neighborhood sings, soulfully, early in the morning. The characters never see her, nor do we. Like so much in the movie and in the lives of these characters, the singer remains offscreen, and it’s up to us to imagine who she might be and why she’s singing and for whom. Some in the Brass family love the singing and the mystery it presents and represents; for others in the family, it’s a nuisance approaching a public disturbance. Likewise, for the Brasses, events have a way of being both happy and sad. Bill and Venida are happy to see their daughter Patti and granddaughter Hadley arrive unexpectedly, but it’s because Patti’s fleeing a dubious domestic situation. Are the flighty Patti’s reports of the dire situation back home accurate, or does she just need money (again)? The Brasses dote over granddaughter Hadley, but why doesn’t she talk? What’s really going on?

The characters may not really know. We may not really know. Such is life. Such is this movie. It feels like the most realistic movie I’ve seen in years. The characters, the situations, the events, and the locations all combine to produce a cinematic reality that comes damn close to what’s generally acknowledged, at least in some quarters, as the real reality. As I watched, I kept thinking yes, that makes sense, that’s how people actually act, how they live, how they celebrate and how they suffer. Director MacLachlan and cinematographer Scott Miller make excellent use of locations in and around Winston-Salem; I wouldn’t be surprised if the low-budget movie was shot entirely on location and without studio sets. That of course adds to the realism.

A Little Prayer obviously can be compared to MacLachlan’s 2004 indie hit Junebug since both deal with contemporary North Carolina families under stress. But the movie I kept thinking of as I watched A Little Prayer was another movie about an aging man trying to hold himself and his family, such as it is, together: David Lynch’s sublime The Straight Story. In the latter, the old man is physically – and so of course also metaphorically – trying to reach his ailing brother. Here, Strathairn’s character isn’t being physically challenged, since he sees his son every day, but he is metaphorically foundering on the rocks of the younger man’s guilt, fear, lies, and anger. Another point of comparison is that both movies are informed by the effects of war and military service. Like Alvin Straight, both Bill and David Brass are combat veterans, Bill in Vietnam and David in Afghanistan or possibly Iraq. Several scenes in A Little Prayer are set in the local VFW hall, and one outside a funeral for another vet. Finally, both movies exude the feel of the real world, perhaps incongruously due to The Straight Story being a David Lynch film, but more acutely for the same reason. [Side note: I looked up the details on The Straight Story to make sure I had remembered the character’s name correctly, and I had. It’s been twenty-five years since I’ve seen it, and my memory isn’t what it used to be. Take that as an indication of how powerfully the movie affected me and how much I enjoyed it.]

So is there a happy ending? Yes and no. Is it a tragedy? Yes and no. It’s like real life. The characters adapt, sometimes they only endure, sometimes they return to the place from whence they came, but their stories go on. A Little Prayer reminds us that things can be happy and sad, hard and easy, rewarding and torturing. While speaking with a mother-to-be, a stunned and stricken Bill, having just had his worst fears about his son confirmed, says (and I paraphrase, not having written it down or with access to check the script) “You have children thinking they belong to you, but they don’t. They are their own persons. And they’ll grow up to break your heart.” Then he goes and gets drunk, and then the next morning life continues and he keeps doing what he hopes is right and best for his family. Maybe he’ll succeed, maybe he won’t, but it feels real. That’s reason enough to see this movie.