The Glass Castle (2017)
Directed by Destin Daniel Cretton
A young girl is raised in a dysfunctional family constantly on the run from the FBI. Living in poverty, she comes of age guided by her drunkard, ingenious father who distracts her with magical stories to keep her mind off the family's dire state, and her selfish, nonconformist mother who has no intention of raising a family, along with her younger brother and sister, and her other older sister. Together, they fend for each other as they mature in an unorthodox journey that is their family life.
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What critics compared The Glass Castle to
This was also the premise of another movie, Captain Fantastic, which came out a year ago, featuring Viggo Mortensen as a very similar father, raging all film long about the failures and corruption of the square world.
While it’s been in development for years, “The Glass Castle” has the unfortunate distinction of coming out one year after Matt Ross’ “Captain Fantastic,” which also focused on an anarchic household raised beyond the clutches of civilization.
This real life parallel to last year's "Captain Fantastic" illustrates how it is possible to both love and hate the same person and how trauma can both scar and strengthen.
Unlike the similarly themed Captain Fantastic, the film makes good on honoring the unexpected universality of even the most atypical families, embracing the crazy within them.
But here is director and co-writer Destin Daniel Cretton manhandling this — a little “Captain Fantastic” here, a lump of “Grapes of Wrath” there, none of it graceful or for that matter logical — into a lumbering ordeal of a picture.
The Glass Castle recalls last year’s Captain Fantastic , another film about a father with questionable ethics and parenting methods.