The Stone Angel, a movie (2007)

Based on the book of the same name (1964) by Canadian author Margaret Laurence, The Stone Angel movie beautifully captures the essence of the story of Hagar Currie Shipley (superbly played by Ellen Burstyn), an elderly curmudgeonly lady facing terminal illness and dementia. Hagar lives with her only surviving son, Marv (Dylan Baker), and his wife, Doris (Sheila McCarthy), and feels she is being forced into an old folks home, losing her possessions, her home, and her identity. Throughout the story, Hagar has flashbacks to her childhood in Manawaka, Manitoba, her early adulthood, her marriage with its highpoints and disappointments, the depression, her separation from her husband Bram (played at different stages by father and son, Wings Hauser and Cole Hauser). The early chapters of Hagar’s life as a young adult were well played by Christine Horne.

Shot on location in Manitoba, Canada, director Kari Skogland achieves stunning backdrops for the various outdoor scenes. One in particular stands out: near the end Hagar has a flashback of being swung up on a horse behind Bram and they turn and ride off into the sunset; the movie could almost have ended like that. The train scenes, especially the ones involving a bet, capture the tense excitement of the events. An extremely poignant surprise is the rendering of the hymn, All People Who on Earth do Dwell, by the local minister Rev. Troy (played by Ted Atherton) in the hospital as Hagar lies in a morphine-induced calm, dying, and his voice fills the hall and captures the attention of all the patients, family, and staff in the hospital wing.

Having read the book first, I found I had an expectation of what the characters looked like that the movie didn’t match although the actors chosen suited their parts well. Quite a bit was left out which made the story flow and not jump back and forth quite as much as it did in the book but both suited their mediums. The story was simplified by the absence of Marv’s grown children and Hagar’s escape to the seaside only had a partial setting but it worked well. The tour of the nursing/retirement home was briefer than in the book as well. The young Bram’s character seemed rather cleaner cut, less vulgar than in the novel and the differences that caused he and Hagar to separate, seemed less obvious. And Hagar uses a completely surprise argument for John to give up his girlfriend, Arlene (the Ellen Page, now Elliot Page) which made sense once I got a chance to think about it.

There were some things that were added that I thought were exceptionally appropriate: Hagar was given a special pin by her father, marking their family clan, which she in turn gave to her younger son, John, who traded it for a pen knife instead of treasuring it. In the movie, Bram found it in a pawn shop and returned it to John who gave it back to his mother. She gave it to Marv just before she died and said she probably should have given it to him in the first place. It was well played. There was much less stream of consciousness in the movie, which I missed — in the book it gave depth to Hagar’s searching her past for clues about how things turned out so differently than she expected — the kind of person she became — the reflection of the stone angel in the cemetery marking her mother’s grave.

I’m not sure it matters if you read the book before watching the movie or vice versa but you should definitely read the book. The movie is great on it’s own — a bit more sex than was necessary to the story — but there is a depth and perception to the book, a broader understanding of the social aspects and the inter-personal relationships, than can be/has been relayed on the screen. A movie worth watching. **** 1/2