‘A Little Prayer’ Review: Angus MacLachlan’s Gentle Family Drama Finds Beauty in the Seemingly Unremarkable [B] | Chicago Critics Film Festival
It’s been said that life doesn’t always make sense until examined in retrospect. The idea of waiting until a later point in one’s existence to fully understand what’s happening in the present day may be tough to swallow, but that’s part of the pain and beauty of living in a linear timeline. In this way, A Little Prayer, the new film from writer-director Angus MacLachlan (Abundant Acreage Available), resembles life itself. It meanders, ambles and sometimes even wastes time as its central characters live their seemingly unremarkable lives. But in the end, when the characters and thus the audience are able to look back on all that came before with awareness of the ultimate destination, it all comes together in a moving, lovely way.
MacLachlan’s characters are so ordinary that they hardly seem like the type that could have a worthwhile story molded around them. As in MacLachlan’s best known screenplay Junebug, this film focuses on an everyday family facing unremarkable strife (but strife nonetheless) and working hard to not let it disrupt the structured existence they’ve built. Bill (David Strathairn) and Venida (Celia Weston) are the parents of David (Will Pullen), who lives in a small adjacent property with his wife Tammy (Jane Levy). Bill and David, both veterans of different generational conflicts, work together at the family business: a sheet metal factory. Tammy gets along remarkably well with her in-laws, who are so enamored of her that, to an unknowing eye, it could be assumed that she’s their biological daughter rather than a hyphenated one. One day, David’s drama magnet of a sister Patti (Anna Camp) arrives in unannounced, hurricane-like fashion after (once again) leaving her husband. She brings her young, quiet daughter Hadley (Billie Roy) with her and, without ever asking, promptly sets up camp in her old bedroom. It’s made clear that this isn’t the first time she’s burst into their deliberately-arranged lives like this, but she’s a hiccup in their collective routine nonetheless. But that’s not the only thing that’s causing tension. Bill has started to notice something suspicious in the way David interacts with the shop’s receptionist Narcedalia (Dascha Polanco), and he takes it upon himself to – with the best of intentions – pry into his son’s life.
Plenty of Americans face this type of drama (and worse!) everyday, which might give the impression that A Little Prayer is uncinematic. Smartly, MacLachlan uses his camera to deliver notable artistic flourishes. The film opens with a dizzying shot of trees taken in from ground level before the camera floats down the street on which the characters reside. This immediately sets a gentle tone, but one not without the potential for disturbance, as epitomized by the camera’s spinning motion in the very first frames. And this conscious choice of cinematography continues throughout the film. MacLachlan uses a casual handheld method for his camerawork, with the lens often shifting and adjusting in ways more typically found in documentaries. This gives the film a feeling of unobtrusive observation, which helps to sell the idea that these characters are working hard to continue living their simple, lowkey lives and the film is merely taking them in as they are. Greg Danner’s gorgeous musical score helps underline this light-yet-compelling energy. His instrumentation is made up of unhurried strings, flute, and harp, making it clear that this is a chamber drama deliberately avoiding outsized emotions and large scale.
While it’s never a dull or overly predictable watch, the film doesn’t work too hard to try and tell a story that hasn’t been seen before by filmgoers. But what sets it apart is the domino-like structure of the screenplay, which silently knocks over more and more pieces until finally reaching its heart-stoppingly emotional conclusion – a small scene between Bill and Tammy. However, the script’s – and thus the film’s – best instances are when the characters aren’t speaking. The movie is filled with small, unremarked-upon moments like a character silently making lunch, or one subtly giving another some money, or a quick shot of an office worker switching from slippers to high heels. These do so much more to paint a complete portrait of these people than the dialogue often does. Despite being a generally understated movie, the characters (especially Bill) have a habit of just blurting out what’s on their mind in alarmingly sudden fashion. This choice somewhat undermines the overall tone, which is otherwise carefully maintained.
Luckily, the film is filled with uniformly perfect performances. Strathairn is a master of emotional control throughout, luxuriating in every close-up of his face and allowing mini-expressions to show his true feelings in ways that the other characters would only notice if they were nose-to-nose with him. Levy takes a character that might seem one-dimensional and brings quiet depth to her. It’s clear that everyone loves her while at the same time her husband makes comments about her being far from perfect, which we’re never allowed to see. Levy’s performance fills in these gaps. As for the two siblings, Camp is a hilarious mess and Pullen is charming despite some of the unsavory things he’s accused of, which is essential to keeping audiences invested in his character. But Celia Weston is the absolute star of the show. The veteran character actress has been turning in reliable supporting performances for decades in such varied films as Far from Heaven, The Village, and Dead Man Walking. In A Little Prayer, she delivers the best performance of her career. While she’s mostly used for comedic purposes, with hilariously curt line readings (when Patti arrives, Venida drolly observes “She brought her metal detector. She left him.”), she gets a pivotal and heartbreaking moment later in the film where she silently shows her character working through a harrowing moment of anxiety. It’s the exact kind of performance from a beloved actress with dozens of credits to her name that the Best Supporting Actress category exists to reward.
As in real life, what’s not said is often louder than what is in A Little Prayer. The film is far more effective when relying on implication rather than outright statement, trusting in the intelligence of the audience to put the pieces together. MacLachlan clearly understands the inner life of people around him in a way that not all writers, or humans, do, and his film makes a case for the importance of every person’s existence.
Grade: B
This review is from the Chicago Critics Film Festival. Music Box Films will release A Little Prayer in theaters later this year.
He currently resides in Chicago and is a proud member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and GALECA: The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics. He also writes and podcasts for Next Best Picture and co-hosts his own podcast “Halloweeners: A Horror Movie Podcast.” You can follow him on Twitter, Letterboxd, and Bluesky @codymonster91
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