Jane Campion's AN ANGEL AT MY TABLE (1990)

An Angel at My Table can be dubbed as a Biopic since it is about a real person who endured tragedy after tragedy, both in her family and to her mental, spiritual and just overall psychic well-being.  But it is not manipulative in the way that Biopics, at least the more modern ones that one comes across (or you can avoid) in recent years, because you can get a real sense that the filmmakers don't want to paint a portrait that lies to the audience or creates some kind of "Narrative" that makes the person at the center some deity or bullshits the way through points in their history - either about their struggles and, importantly, the process of how they can to do what they do.  

I don't know how true this film is to the life of Janet Frame any more than I can say the books are (haven't read them, though this does make me more curious, incidentally the screenwriter of this film would go on the pen Angela's Ashes, which is just as harrowing if more blunt than this film), but Campion knows that what has to matter is that she creates a world that young Jane (played by Alexei Keough, a little by Karen Ferguson and mostly by Kerry Fox once she reaches late teen years) can be see as pained and occasionally happy and alienated and mistreated and curious as possible.  And what is even more remarkable about how affecting and effective this film is - and it is a great one - is that Janet is a mostly introspective person (some today would peg "on the spectrum," but that is speculation I don't want to wade in more). 

The film is a series of incidents and moments, but Campion knows each moment on young Janet as a child builds on the next, and it is not a completely sad affair throughout either (for say the scene where the rigid teacher makes Janet face the board for hours before she says where she got her dad's money from - probably making her lie to get out of the situation was my take - is traumatic, but then there is the other teacher who has her read with him in front of the class and that seems so important and formative for her).  The absolute tragedy, ie one dead sibling here, another there, are treated with gravity and yet these bits of observational filmmaking; Janet is always aware of what is around her even as she is sometimes, many times, an ignored character in places and sometimes lightly ridiculed ("Fuzzy" for her hair). 

I think the accumulation of the details in the story, which spans three parts over childhood, young adult and then her 20' when she was in the mental hospital (and basically tortured under the thought she had Schizophrenia when she categorically did not, depression at most), and then finding herself more fully as a writer, is one part that makes this so successful, how the darkness is still punctuated by so much humanity around Janet, the people around her that do want to be friends with her and talk about boys and normal things, which makes the parts where she is drenched in misery so much harder to take. 

But I found that this as much of an Existentialist story as it is a story of Womanhood in all of its strife and ugly parts.  Or maybe that is not the term I am looking for, but that was what rung in my head when Janet, thinking for a time she will be a teacher when a writer seems so far out of sustainability, is in front of the classroom of kids to be observed doing a lesson and just gets in such a state.  Note how Campion shows the faces of the children waiting for her - a few whisper but mostly a lot of them are just... waiitng, blank-faced. She asks to be excused and we next see her walking in an anxiety attack outside taking off her shoes and just in a total state.

In other words, one of those moments in a life, and this can be a person's life not just like someone such as her who became famous/well-regarded in some circles where anyone can relate I think, that one thinks "no, this isn't it, this is not what I am, nevermind want, and I will have to bear that weight to do something else."  It almost seems like some strange miracle that Janet gets published, while in her mental asylum stay no less (how she got pages out might be one thing I didn't find clear, but it doesn't hurt the overall logic emotionally at least in the film), but it sparks in her a drive that she has to follow and what is so nice is how Campion takes so much time to show what that is like - and how people do organically grow closer to her, including a boyfriend with some pretentious ways (him reading the poem to her before getting to sex is just perfect comic awkwardness).

Keough and Fox especially give such incredible performances here is the thing that takes this into feeling so special.  I don't know whether they spent a lot of time with the read Frame or worked on their characters with Campion, but this is conpletely ego-free work here from them all to make this woman so much of what she is here.  Fox especially does the kind of performance here I sort of have trouble writing about because it is better to just watch it to see for yourself. 

But what reached into my soul so much was that she and Keough and Ferguson show better than almost any other movie I can think of how hard it can be for some highly gifted and emotionally intelligent beings to communicate or relate to people, and how that gulf can be hard to traverse at first if at all.  One of the things that normally is a no-no in films is even showing someone writing (taking up time that should be repetitive), but even here seeing her do this is just as important as when she speaks (or hides away) from others or looks upset and so on.

What else to say?  An Angel at My Table is raw and poetic, harsh and beautiful, an intimate epic about how hard it can be to function in any society where an "outsider" can't fit in so easily - even when there is acceptance.  What a profound, tender, wounded, hopeful, grieving heart and an equally giant imagination and vulnerability to Janet Frame.