Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.
Continuing my survey of some top Canadian films, I turn next to the debut film of American-born, Canadian director Thom Fitzgerald.
Historical Background: Thom Fitzgerald was born in New Rochelle, New York but has done all his filmmaking in Canada. He has made three films thus far. His debut film was the present one, The Hanging Garden (1998). It won more than twenty international prizes, including Genie Awards (Canadian equivalent of the Oscars) for Best Screenplay, Best Supporting Actor (Peter MacNeill), and Best Supporting Actress (Seana McKenna). The film also took the European International Critics' FIPRESCI Award and The People's Choice Award for Best Film at the Toronto International Film Festival of 1997.
Fitzgerald's second film was Beefcake (1999), a kind of docu-comedy paying homage to the physique magazines of the fifties. The film starred Jack LaLanne and Joe Dallesandro and premiered at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival. It received several Genie nominations and won an ACTRA award for best supporting actor (Jonathan Torrens).
Fitzgerald then turned his attention to directing the television show, Wolfgirl (2001). It is available on DVD and has an NC-17 rating. Then he made a drama for television called The Wild Dogs (2002), relating to the 200,000 or so stray dogs that currently run wild in Bucharest, Romania. Fitzgerald's latest film for the big screen is The Event (2003). On a personal level, Fitzgerald has been a vegetarian since 1985, after he saw the film The Animals Farm.
The Story: The story is less a plot than a series of expository vignettes that reveal the personalities and dynamics of a rather dysfunction family, living in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The film interweaves present time developments with memory fragments, shown surrealistically as contemporaneous events. In other words, characters sometimes occupy the same film frame as younger versions of themselves. The protagonist, Sweet William (Chris Leavins), is a 25-year-old gay man who has returned home for the first time in ten years, after a difficult childhood. He ran away from home at fifteen to live in the city. The occasion that has brought him "home" is the impending marriage of his sister, Rosemary (Kerry Fox), who was always his confidante and protector. Oddly enough, the prospective groom, Fletcher (Joel S. Keller), was the lad with whom Sweet William once had his first gay encounter. Fletcher still has eyes for both Rosemary and her brother. Rosemary is boisterous, sassy, and crass, but otherwise a reasonably together person. It doesn't help Rosemary's disposition that Sweet William is late arriving and she's tripping all over her bridal trail.
Sweet William arrives and has to deal with the flood of memories he quickly encounters. He heads first to his grandmother's room. Grace (Joan Orenstein), known as Nana, is in mid-stage Alzheimer's Disease and Sweet William reaches her room just in time to distract her from screaming, "I do, I do," repeatedly, out the bedroom window, just as the vows are being recited by Rosemary and Fletcher in the family garden. Sweet William dances around the bedroom with the old gal. There's some fine fiddle music being played by Basil (Ashley MacIsaac) to enliven the wedding and reception.
The family's garden is an incredible assortment of beautiful flowers and plants. It is the pride and joy of Sweet William's father, Whiskey Mac (Peter MacNeill). Apparently, the garden has been the sole recipient of his love and caring, since all of his family members have received mostly his abuse, though less so now than when the children were young. Whiskey Mac even abuses his mother, Grace, and argues vociferously with his sister, Laurel (Jocelyn Cunningham). It's no coincidence that everyone in this family is named after a flower or plant. Whiskey Mac loves his plants. He had insisted that his son memorize all the names of the plants and which month each blossoms. He frequently whacked Sweet William around, in violent outbursts, when the boy slipped up, only to apologize profusely, later. Then he'd whack Sweet William again, minutes later. When Sweet William was fifteen, he apparently attempted suicide, hanging himself from a tree in the garden (hence the film's name). Sweet William and some of the other family members can still picture him hanging there, as a teenager.
Sweet William had been quite obese, as a teenager (Troy Veinotte), partly to avoid having to play sports and partly to avoid having to date. Sweet William had discovered, in those days, that he preferred Fletcher to the girls in his school. Fletcher, apparently, liked both notions, at least in theory. Now, at twenty-five, Sweet William has trimmed down by some 150 lbs. He's handsome and svelte. He had sent his measurements so that his mother could order a tuxedo, but she had assumed he made a mistake. He attends the wedding swimming around in a tuxedo made for a man almost twice his weight. Those kinds of things happen when you return home and your parents still visualize you as the kid they raised.
Sweet William's mother, Iris (Seana McKenna), is long-suffering and would leave her husband if she could support herself. She has missed her son, more than he can imagine. She's a good mom, by in large, though a bit over-controlling. She immediately starts to chide Sweet William about being too skinny and tries to push food at him. She's come to accept that he's gay, though that wasn't always the case. What can she do? He's come home confidently secure in his identity both as a thin man and a gay man. When he was fifteen, however, she had tried to "straighten him out" by arranging for a needy local woman, Dusty Miller (Martha Irving), to compassionately break him in. Her decision to take such a drastic and unmotherly course of action had been brought on by Sweet William and Fletcher being spotted (by Nana) fondling one another, in the garden. Sweet William had been ushered through the routine by Dusty while Iris had babysat for Dusty's infant, in the kitchen, while listening to the nearby sounds of bedsprings in motion. Now, however, Iris has come around to a stage where she can at least ask her son the name of his lover. As it happens, his name is "Dick," so mother is then left to ask, "What does your Dick do?" Later, Sweet William assures her, calmly, "I love Dick." You catch the drift, here.
There's one other major surprise waiting at home for Sweet William. He's been out of touch with the family for so long that he's got a nine-year-old sister named Violet (Christine Dunsworth) that he didn't even know about and she's dying to meet him. Violet is such a tomboy that Sweet William initially asks his mother, "What's his name?" Sweet William shows Violet some of his old pranks, like spreading flower petals for the wedding guests to slip on.
That's the set-up and there are some interesting plot twists that occur, thereafter, that would be unfair to give away. It's a family full of eccentrics where anything can happen and probably will. Even the dog is half-blind, fully deaf, and senile.
Themes: There may be no term in psychology that covers a wider variety of specific problems than the term "dysfunctional family." It covers a whole host of specific kinds of dynamics, wide-ranging levels of severity, and many different patterns of development over time. One person's dysfunctional family might look like paradise to another person, if they're mired in a far more devastating situation. Many families are dysfunctional for only a part of their existence. A family may be rendered suddenly dysfunctional by a single calamity or the family unit might gradually deteriorate from relative normality to a totally dysfunctional state because of problems brought on by insidiously progressive diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease or Alcoholism.
There are two main themes in this film. One is the experience of discovering one's gay orientation and coping with family opposition, ridicule, and self-doubts. There's a positive side to that theme, as well, when we observe Sweet William having found himself as a slim, handsome, self-confident young man after a dysfunctional upbringing. There's a nice balance between comic and substantive handling of the issue.
The other theme is the issue of returning home and the fact that you can never really fully escape the perceptions that existed in your family when you were a child. Take the situation of two brothers, one older and bigger and the younger one more timid and introspective. The older one becomes a garbage collector and the younger one a CEO of a major corporation, but when the family gets together, the bully still gets his CEO brother in a headlock and raps his knuckles against the poor kid's skull. You might be God Almighty in your professional life and still a dickhead in your old home. It had taken Sweet William ten years to develop enough confidence in his new self to dare to withstand the barrage of forces aiming to push him back into his old persona.
Production Values: This film was Fitzgerald's debut film and, frankly, it has the look and feel of a debut film. That being said, it has the look and feel of a very good first film. Fitzgerald attempts more than he pulls off successfully, but there is enough that is successful to make this a satisfying experience. The eccentric characters are strongly drawn and entertaining. The story is reputedly partly autobiographical, but, then, most stories are. The humor is skillful, though black and bitter. If there's such a genre as Bitter Comedy, this film belongs to it. The grandmother, Nana, is a devout Catholic with a room full of Virgin Mary statues, some of which manage an occasional frown or rolling of the eyes in response to this crazy family's shenanigans. The plot twists are both clever and fun for viewers to discover.
Fitzgerald handles the surreal memory flashes fairly well, but without the mastery of his countryman Atom Egoyan, in such films as The Sweet Hereafter (1997). He fails to clarify the relationship between the hanging scene to memory or imagination. Since it is seen by at least three different members of the family, there would seem to have to be some basis for it in reality, yet Sweet William went on to survive and make his way in the world. The other difficulty is that Fitzgerald was not yet fully in control of his film's style. It fluctuates too wildly between farce, kitchen-sink realism, and magical realism. A third problem is that the traumas experienced by the teen Sweet William do not seem to involve enough emotional inflection to give the suicide attempt real credence. Viewers are left thinking that Sweet William was either overreacting or his experiences were a lot worse than what is shown. The film's pace is very good, with few slow moments.
The garden theme was good for a lot of intriguing symbolism and also provided plenty of appealing visuals. Both the house and the yard were well-designed sets for this find of family drama. The traditional Nova Scotia brand of Irish fiddle music is another one of the film's delights.
Leading the category of delights, with this film, are the performances. There's not a weak performance among them. The role of Sweet William was ably divided among three actors, with Chris Leavins taking the adult role, Troy Veinotte the teen, and Ian Parsons appearing only briefly as the child. Leavins and Veinotte were each outstanding. The role of Rosemary was likewise divided – between two very fine actresses: Kerry Fox, as the adult Rosemary, and Sarah Polley, as the teen. Kerry Fox's other professional work includes An Angel at My Table (1990), The Last Day's of Chez Nous (1993), and Shallow Grave (1994). Sarah Polley has appeared in The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1989), Exotica (1995), The Sweet Hereafter (1997), Go (1999), eXistenZ (1999), and Dawn of the Dead (2004). Seana McKenna and Peter MacNeill gave strong supporting performances as the parents and were rewarded with Genies.
Bottom-Line: The MGM DVD provides a good digital transfer but just the theatrical trailer for an extra, along with a choice of English or Spanish subtitles. The film's running time is 91 minutes. This is not a great film, but it's plenty entertaining enough for an evening, with some interesting themes to ponder after the credits run.
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