The Glass Castle

In an interview following the closing credits of The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls, 57, who wrote the memoir upon which the film is based, reflects, “I had a wicked childhood. But there were moments of beauty as well.”

Such are the words of an abused child seemingly still covering for wicked parenting.

In the film, Jeannette’s father, Rex (Woody Harrelson), a dreamer and a drunk, perpetually fiddles with blueprints for a house with glass walls and roof that he promises to build for his wife, Rose Mary (Naomi Watts), and four children. In fact, he moves his family from one abandoned hovel to the next, drinking up the family’s small income. Rose Mary is a talented artist lost in her own fantasy world.

“Would you rather me make you food that’ll be gone in an hour or finish this painting that’ll last forever?” Rose Mary asks a famished Jeannette (Brie Larson).

Scenes in The Glass Castle alternate between Jeannette’s childhood and 1989, when she’s a successful writer in New York City and her parents are squatters on the Lower East Side. Exceptional acting—particularly from the many child actors and Harrelson perhaps at his best—make for a gripping film (rated PG-13 for its theme, bad language, and smoking) about loosening unhealthy bonds.

But are Rex and Rose Mary child abusers or “free spirits”? Director Destin Daniel Cretton, to praise from Jeannette Walls, strives to show the parents’ “complexity,” a seeming appeal not to judge. Really? Rex and Rose Mary neglect to feed their children for days at a time. Rex tosses preteen Jeannette, who can’t swim, into a pool’s deep end. A few years later, he teaches her a much tougher lesson in self-reliance when he abandons her to a drunk bar patron.

The family apparently experiences joyful times, but it’s hard to see the glass castle as anything but well short of half full.