User Reviews

Telling the story of a talented and prolific artist can be quite a challenge: What should be included? What should be excluded? And how should the narrative effectively fuse the personal and professional sides of the artist's life? It's a task that's easy to get wrong (and, unfortunately, it happens far too often in many contemporary film biographies). So it's indeed comforting to see one that gets things right, as is the case with this well-crafted documentary about writer Joyce Carol Oates, author of more than 100 books (many of them award winners) in multiple genres, both under her own name and several pseudonyms. On top of that, though, she has also developed a renowned reputation as a professor and as an outspoken and eloquent liberal social and political critic, both through her writings and social media posts. Writer-director Stig Björkman's latest presents a comprehensive, articulate and skillfully organized profile of Oates, showing how her meager beginnings played a role in her love of writing and the views she embraced upon coming of age, themes repeatedly reflected in her prose. The film accomplishes all this in a clear, concise, balanced, economically packaged offering, making its points about her public and personal lives without unduly belaboring them and backing them up with voice-over readings from her books by Laura Dern. If I had any complaint about this release, it would be that its ending seems a bit abrupt and truncated, almost as if the filmmaker didn't quite know how to suitably wrap up the project. There's really no need for this, either, given that the picture's efficient 1:34:00 runtime is far from excessive. That aside, however, this is an otherwise-excellent overview of a writer whose works truly deserve all the gracious attention and praise that they receive, providing Oates's fans with a fitting tribute of the author and viewers unfamiliar with her books plenty of good reason to give them a serious look.

I have never read Joyce Carol Oats because I am not fond of her subjects. But I had just seen the good bio-pic "Blonde" based on her book. So while looking for my next film to watch I came across this film and thought if she could write a good biography of Marilyn Monroe maybe this might be OK. It wasn't.

I have seen many bio-pics, many quite good. As a writer myself, non-fiction, many have been about writers, artists or musicians. Creative people. But my first rule of a good bio-pic is that the subject should not be actually in the film. Preferably dead. There is nothing like interviews of the subject to make a bio-pic boring. There should be a story, perhaps accurate, maybe not so accurate as was "Blonde". We want to get a feel for the person. Maybe some of her writing, or her books, films, art, music etc. Especially popular music, here is where extended performances are much better than 15 second clips. There was some of this here, the most effective were written rather than spoken. But mostly for those of us who maybe did not know much about her. There can be some film clips of events pertaining to her life, but again don't overdo it.

But most of all, professional actors, often several, should play parts of the subject's life. The writer of the bio-pic can more efficiently portray an idea than a random clip of the subject herself. Fiction is usually better than real life.

Frankly I was not very engaged by this film and didn't come away with an appreciation of her as a person or writer. I may run out and read her book "Blonde" to see how it compared to the film but I am quite sure I will not read many other of her books. They should have Oat's book which knows how to do it right before attempting this film.