The Glass Castle is a well shot, well acted, well told, piece of manipulative wishy washy rubbish. Think along the lines of Captain Fantastic but without the razor sharp point to make about how unhealthy that sort of lifestyle is.
Woody Harrelson is Rex, the non conformist hard drinking abusive dad who spends his kids childhood moving them from squat to squat with no money, patchy amounts of love and respect and little school. Brie Larson is Jeanette, the daughter who begins with deep respect and admiration for her bizarre dad and his unconventional parenting methods, but as she grows up begins to seemingly detest him and with her siblings begins to plot escape from him and Naomi Watts as the floaty failed artist mother.
The story is told partly in 1989 and partly in flashbacks to the 1960's/70's, going between childhood and adulthood and the now grown Jeanette attempts to unwrap her complex feelings about her father and her childhood as try as she might, she cannot remove him from her life entirely.
The acting is absolutely superb, Brie Larson continuing her stellar performances, Woody Harrelson gives a notable performance as does Naomi Watts, and the siblings give passable performances although they don't get enough time in the film to be properly judged. It's beautifully shot, amazing music, aesthetically it all looks amazing, from 1960s rough living in the heartland of America to 1980s New York, and all the clothes and costumes looked authentic.
However where The Glass Castle stumbles so badly is that despite how it portrays Jeanette's childhood, and how it portrays Rex as an abusive drunk, it still decides to try and do the 'both sides' shtick, and show that despite the awful abusive childhood, Jeanette overall loves her father, and her and her three siblings look to the positives of childhood, rather than the abuse, lack of food, and the film attempts to manipulate us too into thinking 'well, he might have been a wife beating drunk, but he was still her dad, right?' And the ending in tune with that theme, is complete sappy nonsense that devalues a lot of what came before it.
It's a real shame, because it feels as though there's a much better film in here somewhere, and the fact it goes to such a useless sappy place feels like a betrayal of what came before. Fortunately, the excellent acting and cinematography save it from being a complete train wreck, but that just makes it all the more disappointing.
