White Oleander, the book cover. I have NO idea why the woman on the cover is a brunette.
Warning:
this essay is going to compare the book “White Oleander” with the
movie “White Oleander” and will spoil the living shit out of
both. If you have not watched the movie/read the book, stop reading
this essay right now and watch the movie/read the book. I would
recommend the book over the movie, but the movie is fine as well.
As
wonderful as this essay may be, it's not nearly as good as reading
”White Oleander” or watching the movie. Don't cheat yourself.
This
essay is also 8800 words long. You have been warned.
“White
Oleander” is about Astrid Magnussen, a young girl (she is 12 when
the book opens) whose mother Ingrid kills her lover and is caught and
sentenced to prison for it, leavin Astrid to languish in the
California foster care system for most of her teenage years.
If
this sounds like a Lifetime Channel tearjerker movie to you, I don't
blame you for thinking so. It definitely has the form of a Lifetime
tearjerker, but it's very different in its focus and intent, and it
ignores the conventions of the genre completely.
White
Oleander is more of a coming-of-age story, but it's a very
unconventional coming-of-age story. Astrid must deal with the various
foster families she lives with while in the foster care system, and
the events that occur as she does so. And most of all, she must deal
with her mother Ingrid, who is a domineering bitch. Many reviewers
have called Ingrid a narcissist and a sociopath, some even going so
far as to say she is a narcissistic sociopath, and certainly she's a
narcissist, though I don't believe she's a total sociopath.
Certainly, she's close enough for hand grenades and horseshoes. But
there's an alternate interpretation of Ingrid that I think is more
interesting than just labeling her a sociopath.
When
we first meet Ingrid and Astrid, they are living in Los Angeles.
Ingrid is earning her living as a paste-up artist for a movie mag
called ”Cinema Scene,” making $8 an hour, a near-minimum wage
even in the late 1980s (my, how things don't change). Barry Kolker, one of the movie movers and
shakers who shows up in the pages of “Cinema Scene,” is dating
one of the editors at the magazine, and he spots Ingrid.
Very
shortly thereafter Kolker has dumped the editor and is pursuing
Ingrid. That's because Ingrid is ravishingly beautiful. “Every girl
thinks her mother is the most beautiful woman she has ever seen, but
my mother was the most beautiful woman anyone I knew had ever seen,”
Astrid says in the book. Michelle Pfeiffer was cast as Ingrid
Magnussen, and she is a dead perfect in the role.
Ingrid
and Astrid's beauty is an important plot point, actually. They are
beautiful, and they are very aware they are beautiful. In fact,
Ingrid is snobbish about her beauty. She does not like people who are
not as attractive as her and criticizes them for their looks very
freely.
Astrid
is not yet the beauty her mother is, but she's well on her way, and
in the same cool Scandanavian blond way. And she is very conscious of
how she looks to other people, and uses her looks to her advantage at
times.
Ingrid
works as a paste-up artist but in her free time she is a poet and
artist, creating poems and art projects. She gets her poems published
by the sort of publishers that publish poems, and her art projects
show up in the sort of galleries that show art projects. She's fairly
successful but it's definitely a niche market and there's no money at
all in it … hence her $8 an hour paste-up job.
Ingrid
is a raging narcissist, and she has nothing but contempt for people
who are powerful but do not measure up to her scale of beauty and
artistry.
Barry
Kolker doesn't measure up on either count. He's older, overweight,
and a bit of a pig. But he pursues Ingrid while Ingrid mocks him
thoroughly to Astrid. She eventually dates Kolker, and falls for him
despite his total unsuitability from her aesthetic point of view.
A
cynical man might suspect that she allows herself to fall for Kolker
because he's wealthy and shows her the good life, something that her
past lovers have done, though those lovers were handsome and
aesthetically pleasing to Ingrid.
Countering
that notion we have the fact that Ingrid is not at all interested in
things like fine meals, except perhaps for their aesthetic elements.
Astrid recalls that Ingrid could eat nothing but peanut butter for
days on end without even appearing to notice it. (Astrid does not
give us her feelings on the matter of eating nothing but peanut
butter for days on end, but given that it's a childhood memory, I bet
it stuck with her for a reason.)
Ingrid
is entirely focused on the aesthetics of her life, and she feels that
the hardships she encounters as an $8 an hour pasteup artist and
single mother are the attempts of the world to break her and her
daughter's spirit. She often reminds Astrid of their Viking heritage,
that they came from people who slew their gods and hung their body
parts from trees.
That's
how Ingrid sees herself and her daughter, as beautiful, heroic
Vikings struggling to maintain their standards in a world that has no
appreciation of them, except perhaps for their beauty, which is
unattainable by most.
Kolker
starts ghosting a bit on Ingrid, and she suspects something is up, so
she drives out to meet up with him at his apartment, leaving Ingrid
in the car.
The
meeting goes fabulously at first. Ingrid and Kolker make love. But
then Kolker throws Ingrid out, saying she has to leave because he has
a date arriving soon.
Now
that is cold.
But
there's a risk to being cold, Kolker learns. Ingrid conceives a deep
and aesthetic hatred for Kolker. Ingrid's hatred leads her to stalk
Kolker and harass him, breaking into his house and erasing all the
data on his 1980s PC, finally culminating in murdering Kolker with
the juice of the white oleander. The white oleander is a plant that
has significance to Ingrid because it is a hardy desert plant that
can thrive where other plants can't, but still puts out beautiful,
waxy white blossoms … and of course, it's deadly poisonous. It's a
very aesthetically pleasing murder, you can see how Ingrid couldn't
resist it.
And
that's why the simple sociopath label is a mistake. it makes it too
easy to gloss over all the character development that led Ingrid to
murder Kolker. I think a large portion of Ingrid's motivation for
murdering Kolker was wounded pride from being rejected by Kolker
after relaxing her standards so much for him.
And
possibly I'm reading too much into it, but perhaps one of the reasons
Ingrid relaxed her standards for Kolker was that she was interested
in settling down with him. She knew very well that she was beautiful,
and that she was capable of attracting almost any man she wanted to,
in fact, she frequently attracted men she was not particularly
interested in attracting – like Kolker, initially. And when Kolker
dumps her, it's an even more powerful denial for her.
Well
what with all the stalking and break-ins, it doesn't take the cops
long to figure out who killed Kolker, and Astrid wakes up one morning
to see Ingrid being hauled away by the cops in handcuffs. Ingrid
yells to Astrid that they can't keep her and she'll be back in a few
hours.
Astrid
can't believe what's happened. She knew her mother had murdered
Kolker, but she never dreamed she be jailed for it … that was the
sort of thing that only happened to less refined, less attractive
people. Making it worse is that Astrid absolutely adores her mother.
Like the child she is (she is 12 or 13 when the murder is committed)
she has uncritically accepted her mother's view of herself and the
world.
But
Ingrid does not return, instead, after a day or two, Child Protective
Services finally comes to the apartment, where Astrid has been
keeping vigil for Ingrid. She's told she has 15 minutes to pack all
her things, then it's off to the CPS processing center.
Astrid
gets placed in a foster home presided over by the mother, Starr, an
ex-stripper who still dresses to reveal her ripe body. There are also
two boys in the home, and a girl slightly older than Astrid, Coralee,
who is Starr's natural daughter. There's also Ray, a carpenter who is
married to a woman he hasn't seen in five years and is Starr's
boyfriend.
Starr
is an ex-alcoholic thanks to some recently acquired devout
Christianity. She buys clothes for Astrid and pretty soon has her
baptized, which does not exactly make Astrid a devout Christian. But
as she tells Peter, the older of the two boys whom she has taken a
liking to, it's good to have something to believe in. One gets the
sense that Astrid has adopted Christianity as a fall-back position, a
bit of safety given that her mother's philosophy does not seem to
have worked out.
This
is a recurring theme of the book, the way Astrid learns from and
adapts to the various families she lives among.
Starr's
family is mostly nice people, and Astrid finds them comfortable
people to live among. Uncle Ray, as Starr's boyfriend is called,
takes a friendly interest in Astrid, and teaches her to play chess,
which she really enjoys -- it's an echo of the aesthetic life with
her mother.
Eventually
Astrid finds Ray very attractive sexually, and she knows Ray finds
her attractive, too, having inherited her mother's ability to use her
beauty and to be aware of its effect on other people.
Meanwhile,
Astrid gets a letter from her mother, who has been sentenced to 35
years to life in prison for murdering Kolker. Throughout her time in
foster homes, Ingrid and Astrid correspond, maintaining their bond
though Astrid become less and less happy about her mother over time,
and with good reason.
Ingrid
is amused by Astrid's new clothing but she is incensed when she
learns that Astrid has been baptized and gone Christian, as she feels
it is a repudiation of her violent Viking beliefs. This tension
between Astrid and her mother over the new ideas and lifestyles
Astrid encounters is a running theme in the book that eventually
leads to tragedy. (Well, more tragedy.)
Astrid
and the other kids are allowed to visit the library, and in the
library she finds a book that really fires her mind up: a survival
guide. You know, one of those books that recount how shipwrecked
sailors on rafts survived for weeks and months on end by drinking the
dew from the masts of their boats, that sort of thing. When Astrid
encounters adversity, and she'll encounter a lot of it, she goes back
to this book, thinking of the privations people has endured to
encourage herself to endure her own privations.
This
is the key to understanding Astrid, I think. Her life prior to
Kolker's murder was wasn't your typical middle class life, but her
mother whom she idolized was (almost) always there, caring for her.
That life was wiped away in an instant, when the cops came for her
mother. Astrid sees Starr's family as a raft she is on after her old
life foundered, and she must do whatever she can to survive.
But
even in survival mode, Astrid wants a little goodness from life. The
particular bit of goodness she wants is Ray. She knows Ray is
attracted to her, and she is attracted to him, mostly for his
goodness and kindness and maleness. He is far from attractive:
slightly overweight, three fingers missing, he's very much a regular
guy, but a nice regular guy. I pictured him as a buffer, tanner
version of Jeff Bridges in The Big Lebowski, maybe a little younger,
too.
Ingrid
divines from Astrid's letters that she is attracted to Ray and is, of
course, incensed. “Never lay down for the father!” she declares.
She doesn't tell Astrid she's to young at 14 to have sex, no she just
tells Astrid not to have sex with Dad. Which is good advice. Which
Astrid does not take. Astrid is not at all swayed by her mother's
command, she is more concerned with the fact that sleeping with Ray
is counter to traditional morality. Ray is Starr's man, the woman who
has taken her in, and it's wrong to steal him. Astrid knows that. But
still, she wants Ray, and it's Ingrid's Nietzschean “Do what thou
wilt” that Astrid finally goes with. She manages to be alone with
Ray in one of the houses he is building and makes her move. With her
mother's beauty and sexuality, even young as she is, Ray doesn't
resist her when she makes her move, and soon they are sexually
“breaking in” rooms in unfinished houses all over Los Angeles.
Starr
gets wind of the attraction between Astrid and Ray and threatens to
call Child Protective Services, but Astrid dissuades her by pointing
out that it might make Ray angry if he thinks she has thrown Astrid
out, and by swearing she is not attracted to Ray -- straight-up
lying.
Starr
starts drinking shortly thereafter, and not too long after gets into
a drunken rage and grabs Ray's 38 caliber pistol and perforates
Astrid with a bullet. Ray drags Starr off and the older son calls 911
and patches Astrid up, saving her life, but leaving the family
destroyed.
Astrid
of course is overwhelmed with guilt, feeling that she has inherited
her mother's poisonous sexuality. Like a kid, she thinks everything
is all about her. She's guilty of taking Starr's man, true, but she
never even considers that Ray should have been enough of an adult to
refuse to have sex with her. Or that Starr should not have taken up
drinking. Or that Starr should not have shot her. No, it's all
Astrid's fault, in her mind … she's still 14. It's all about her
dangerous sexuality, you see.
The
one consolation Astrid gets is letters from Ingrid in which she
expresses her grief and fear when she learns that Astrid has been
shot and might not make it out of the hospital, and then her relief
and joy when she learns that Astrid will live.
When
Astrid gets out of the hospital, her next foster home is Marvel
Turlock's. Astrid describes them as “my first real family” and by
that she means thoroughly middle class, with the father a nebbishy
sort, and the mother, Marvel, is a Mary Kay cosmetics saleswoman.
Marvel, a dour and domineering woman, mainly wants Astrid to function
as a maid and domestic assistant, roles which Astrid adapts to
readily, still in survival mode. Meanwhile, there is school, where
she does well, her mother having done a really good job of educating
her in everything except math.
While
surviving in Marvel's home, Astrid becomes curious about Marvel's
next door neighbor, Olivia Johnstone, a beautiful black woman who is
gone much of the time. She hears Marvel describe Olivia as a “nigger
who thinks she is better than us with her nice cars, but we all know
how she makes her money -- flat on her back.”
This
of course pique's Astrid's interest big time, and shortly thereafter
she has finagled her way into Olivia's life and they become friends.
Olivia it turns out is a high-class courtesan sort of prostitute, a
well-educated former professional with lots of wealthy clients who
pay her very well to be their arm candy and mistress as occasion
demands. Soon she is taking Astrid on trips to Rodeo Drive to go
shopping with her, and introducing her to a very different lifestyle
than she has experienced with Ingrid, Starr or Marvel.
Astrid
of course wants to try out this prostitution thing, and she has also
been wanting to smoke some pot (Ray smoked pot, and shared his pipe
with Astrid during their special times together. Ray was a nice guy,
but careless in many respects, which may be why he lost his first
family, not to mention his fingers.)
She
knows some of the bad boys at school smoke pot, as she walks past
them on her way home, and stops by and makes a deal with the dealer
of the bunch, sucking his cock in exchange for a baggie of pot. She
found it not at all exciting to suck the boy's cock, nor did she find
it particularly horrible or disgusting, but she liked having the pot.
(Granted, Astrid's experiences up to that point had given her very high standards for horrible and disgusting.)
And
speaking of horrible and disgusting experiences, when Astrid is out
jogging one evening, she's severely mauled by a group of neighborhood
dogs, sending her to the hospital once again. This is probably the
most blatantly bad plotting in the book … it drops into the story
out of nowhere, and goes nowhere. I'm just mentioning it because it's
a major event in Astrid's stay with the Turlocks. I think Fitch might
have stuck it in there just to have something physically horrible
happen to Ingrid during her stay with the Turlocks. She got shot by Starr and mauled by dogs while with the Turlocks, who knows what adventures await her?
When
Astrid tells Olivia about her little foray into prostitution, Olivia
says, “That's not what I meant,” which I think means that she
doesn't think that sucking boy's cocks for pot is the way to
become a high-priced courtesan. But Astrid likes the pot so she keeps
at it, having no other way to get pot.
Ingrid
is pissed when she learns that Astrid has made friends with a
prostitute, and advises her to run from away from the woman because
she is a tool of the Powers That Be and that Astrid will learn
nothing from her but how to be used by the Powers That Be. Astrid is
unpersuaded … perhaps because at this point her mother, having destroyed her own
family with her sexuality and gotten herself a 35 years to life
prison sentence to boot, has very little credibility with Astrid on
the topic of handling sexuality or anything else.
Eventually,
and it's very eventually, Marvel gets wind of Astrid's hanging out
with a prostitute, pot smoking and such, and calls the cops down on
Olivia and then calls Child Protective Services. So it's off to a new
home for Astrid.
Astrid
is pretty sick about it. Life at the Turlocks was dull but stable,
other than the occasional mauling by dogs.
Astrid's
new foster mother is Amelia Ramos and life under Amelia's care is
very stable, too, except for one thing. Ramos has about half a dozen
young charges, and she was making good money from CPS for fostering
them, so to maximize the money, she starved them. Not to death, just
enough to keep them able to move and function. But undernourished
enough that it affects Astrid's academic performance in school, in
the sense that the numbers and letters on the page kind of swim in
front of her eyes and she can't concentrate.
Astrid
also scrounges through the school garbage for food and she still has
vivid red scars on her face from the dog attack, so she's considered
a freak by her schoolmates.
Astrid
is surprisingly cool with this. She says, “The scars on my inside
should show on my outside.”
She
is 14 or 15 at this point, and this is just the sort of thing you
would expect a 15 year old to say. Very teen angsty, though Astrid has
come by her angst honestly.
Astrid
complains to Child Protective Services about not being fed,
repeatedly, but the caseworker in charge of her is in awe of Ramos
and doesn't buy it. Fortunately, after several months of starvation
Astrid's caseworker leaves the job and a new caseworker comes in and
takes Astrid's complaints seriously and gets her moved to another
home.
This
doesn't help the half a dozen or so other girls being starved at
Ramos' place, but none of them dares to complain because they fear
that if they do, they will be taken to MAC, the MacConnell Children's
Center where children go when they can't get placed at a foster home.
The kids at Ramos' place are terrified of it, trading the devil they
know for the devil they don't know.
The
new caseworker places Astrid in a home that works out far better than
any of the others she has been in. The husband, Mark Richards, is a
successful reality show producer of a series that specializes in woo
… haunted houses, that sort of thing. The wife, Claire Richards, is
an actress who is not nearly so successful. Mark's job keeps him on
the road much of the time, and Claire is left alone in the house, and
it's clear that Astrid is there to keep her company.
But
Claire does something that none of her other foster parents did: she
gives Astrid unconditional love. This is something Astrid has never
encountered before, because of course narcissist Ingrid considers
Astrid to be a flawed extension of herself, when she notices Astrid
at all.
Astrid
of course returns Claire's love. She has been starved for love all
her life, and she opens right up to Claire. She finally understands
what it's like to be loved for who you are, without any caveats, and
she loves it.
Astrid
tells Claire all about herself and of course Claire is fascinated by
Ingrid, the doomed poetess done wrong by her man.
Ingrid
senses Astrid's affection for Claire from her letters and hates
Claire, which is a Very Bad Thing because Claire is a gentle soul who
is prone to depression, suspecting that Mark's frequent absences
involve infidelity. In fact, Mark and Claire's real motivation for
fostering Astrid was so that she could kind of watch Claire and not
let her kill herself in a fit of depression.
Claire
and Ingrid correspond. There is nothing Astrid can do to stop them
from corresponding. She tries to tell Claire how dangerous and evil
her mom can be, but Claire does not take Astrid seriously, she is
blinded by Ingrid's brilliance as an artist. Eventually Claire wants
to meet Ingrid, and Astrid finds herself forced to come along, filled
with dread, knowing her mother is going to do something terrible to
Claire. And of course, Ingrid does just that, very deliberately. She
even advises Astrid to “Keep your bags packed” before the visit
is over.
Over
the Christmas holidays, one of the few times when Mark is sure to be
home, he gets called away to chase some woo happening somewhere for
his show, and it really cranks up Claire's fear of abandonment and
infidelity, which of course are EXACTLY the feelings Ingrid worked on
when she spoke alone with Claire during their visit.
So
after Mark's tumultuous departure for the land of woo, Astrid hides
because she can't handle the turmoil in the one place she'd found
that she felt loved at. Later she goes and comforts Claire, and
sleeps with her, not in the sexy way, even though Claire gives Astrid
a kiss full on the lips. Astrid says she would have let Claire do
anything to her sexually at that point, she loved Claire so much (but
also not in a specifically sexual way, just general love for her as a
person). But it's not a sexy kiss, it's a goodbye kiss, because when
Astrid wakes up the next morning she finds Claire is dead, with a
spilled bottle of sleeping pills next to her.
This
understandably freaks Claire out, and she spends half a day wandering
around mindlessly in the house, then calls Mark.
With
her foster mother dead, Astrid winds up at the MacConnell Children's
Center, the MAC that all the starvelings at Ramos' home feared so
much. It is a rough place: Astrid cuts her long blond hair short
because the boyfriend of another girl at MAC comments that he thinks
Astrid is pretty and the girl and her friends jump Astrid and rough
her up.
But
other than that, MAC turns out to be a pretty nice place. Its
institutional predictability is comforting to Astrid after so much trauma in the families she has been placed with. Nobody
there loves her, but nobody there shoots her or kills themselves, and
she can handle a little beating … on the scale of things she has
been through, it's minor.
Also,
while she's there, she meets a boy, Paul Trout, who is an artist like
Astrid. Well, not like Astrid, he draws comics instead of doing
watercolors like Astrid. But she sees genuine artistry in his comics,
and although she doesn't become his girlfriend, exactly, they do
become friends through their shared interest in art and in being
outsiders (white kids are relatively rare in the foster child system
generally and especially MAC, which the book does acknowledge in
places. It's part of the White Oleander theme of the book: rare,
poisonous plants with beautiful white blossoms, you see.)
Both
Paul and Astrid are eventually placed with new homes, but Paul has an
arrangement with a local comics store that's happy to function as a
mail drop for him while he's with a home (Paul runs away from his
foster homes a lot) and also setting up a drop for Astrid, so they
can communicate.
Astrid
gets a chance to go home with a very nice suburban couple but turns
it down because she does not feel there is anything she can learn
from them.
This
actually marks a major change in Astrid, the first time she's
actually made a choice about where she will be living. Throughout the
book Astrid has been struggling with her mother's attempt to control
her, but never really making any choices for herself in her own life,
other than continuing to draw and paint.
Instead
of going with the suburban couple, Astrid goes home with Rena
Grushenka. Rena is a Russian who makes a living by scavenging, and
Astrid is one of several girls she has scavenged from the foster care
system. But with the girls, Rena's scavenging is benevolent in
nature. The girls help Rena scavenge, and help her fix up or decorate
scavenged items to increase their value. That's really all that's
required of them (she's fostering them for the money, like the evil
Mrs. Ramos, but unlike Mrs. Ramos, they get plenty to eat and a place
to sleep. Who they sleep with is not a great interest of Rena's, nor
are their social lives and activities, so long as they attend school
as required).
Most
of the girls in Rena's house at the time are in their teens, in a
neighborhood full of boys who are either in bands, starting a band or
thinking about starting one, so boyfriends and bands with loud music
blaring 24/7 and plenty of soft drugs to enjoy are the norm.
Astrid
is not a fan of the 24/7 party music, but as always, she adapts. And
she does learn to like the scavenging lifestyle. She learns how to
bargain and how to stick up for what she wants as part of the
bargaining process.
She
also befriends Yvonne, one of the girls at Rena's who is pregnant,
and winds up going with her to her birthing classes, and even ends up
attending at her child's birth, taking the place of the boyfriend who
has ghosted.
Astrid
stays with Rena for several years, graduating from high school and
finishing out her time as a foster child, too.
Meanwhile,
Ingrid has been having a lot of success as the woman poet imprisoned
for murder, kinda wrongfully if you squint your eyes real hard and
don't focus them, which a lot of people are willing to do for a
beautiful imprisoned woman poet. She gets publicity, and her case
attracts a big time feminist women's attorney, Susan Valeris, and
soon there is a new trial in the offing on some legal grounds or
other.
Valeris
wants Astrid to testify on behalf of her mother, to explain that her
mother never planned to kill Kolker, and that she did not poison him.
And Astrid is fully willing to lie in court for her mom. But her time
with Rena has sharpened Astrid. She realizes that there is something
Ingrid needs from her, and that means she has power over Ingrid. So
she meets with Ingrid and tells her she will testify for her,
anything she likes, but in return, Ingrid needs to tell her the truth
about a few things.
Ingrid
of course says she has always told Astrid the truth, and that's when
Astrid asks Ingrid who Annie was. “Annie” is a person whom Astrid
has had vague snatches of memories of all her life. Very vague
snatches, like memories of the phrase “Make tinkle for Annie.”
Not “make tinkle for mommy.” And she occasionally draws a
round-faced woman from memory whom she does not remember.
“How
can you remember that?” Ingrid asks. And then proceeds to confess
that when Astrid was a toddler, Ingrid got fed up with motherhood and
abandoned Astrid for a year or so, dumping her on Annie, a neighbor
who took in children and babysat. She left Astrid with her for an
afternoon, then one thing led to another, and bob's yer uncle, Astrid
remained with Annie for a year before Ingrid dropped by to pick her
up.
For
some reason, this pisses Astrid off, as she realizes that is the
reason she has been so strongly attached to Ingrid. Ingrid had
already abandoned her once. Astrid had spent her whole life anxious
that her mother would abandon her again, and of course, when Ingrid
killed Kolker, that was a form of abandonment, too. Ingrid had
certainly never taken the effect this would have on Astrid into
account, and if she had, she would have dismissed it with some
Nietzchean bullshit along the lines of “Whatever doesn't kill us
makes us stronger.”
“You
should have been sterilized!” Astrid says, pissed as hell.
Ingrid
is upset by the coldness she finds in Astrid, and the ground shifts
as Ingrid bargains to get back in Astrid's good graces. Astrid is
still a hard bargainer, and of course, what Ingrid has done is
something that requires more than an apology. She tell Ingrid that
the only way she will believe that Ingrid actually loves her is if
she were to tell her lawyer to stop pestering Astrid to testify on
Ingrid's behalf. If she really loves Astrid, she'll give up the
testimony that offers her strongest hope of being acquitted, and risk
spending the rest of her life behind bars.
This
is remarkably cold of Astrid. As a test of love, it's as extreme as
it gets, and it's not just Ingrid who's taking a risk here. Imagine
the guilt Astrid might feel if her mother's retrial resulted in a
guilty verdict and she spent the rest of her life behind bars because
Astrid didn't testify on her behalf. It's a risk Astrid is willing to
take, which makes me think more than a little bit of Mom now resides
in Astrid's soul.
Granted,
Astrid doesn't have a love/hate relationship with her mother. It's
more like love/hate/hate/hate/hate, and let's have a little more hate
just to be on the safe side. Astrid has come a long way from the
little girl who stood in awed worship of her mother's beauty and
artistic dedication.
Ingrid
accepts the deal, she wants to be in Astrid's good graces just that
badly. Perhaps it is because for all the years behind bars, Astrid
has been the one true human connection that Ingrid has had on the
outside world. Or maybe the risk to Ingrid is not so great as it
might seem: she is a dedicated aesthete. She is still able to write
poetry while sitting in her jail cell, and that might just be enough,
for Ingrid.
Freed
of any obligation to her mother, Astrid hooks up with Paul through
the comic bookstore mail drop, and the two of them move to Berlin.
Why Berlin? I have no fucking clue. Maybe because in Germany college
is free to anyone who wants to attend, and Paul and Astrid enroll as
kibitzers in some advanced art classes.
In
Berlin Astrid stops drawing and starts creating art projects. She
buys suitcases and decorates her interior with found art from flea
markets and such.
Wait,
I said “her interior” instead of “their interiors.” That was
not a mistake. The suitcases all relate to memories and events in her
life. For example, there is a “Claire” suitcase that incorporates
27 different words for “sorrow” and sleeping pills and swatches
of nice fabric. These suitcases represent Astrid incorporating her
life into some kind of structure, something she can get a handle on
rather than a random series of Dickensian tragedies as they might
seem to a disinterested observer.
Throughout
the book Astrid has expressed fears that she would wind up alone,
abandoned and eventually dead, like the rusted out hulks of cars that
litter then dry basin of the Los Angeles River. It's not just a fear
of death, it's a fear of nothingness, a fear of never having been.
The suitcases represent Astrid building herself into a person, of
creating a life for herself, something she is also doing as she lives
with Paul in Berlin. Their life is one of extreme poverty, as neither
really has a job or any skills … basically, they are orphans with
high school degrees (at least in Astrid's case, I'm not sure about
Paul's). They live in an abandoned building with just a single space
heater that smells like singed hair when it's working, sleeping
together in a sleeping bag fully clothed because it's just that
fucking cold in Berlin.
But
they do have a life, however precarious economically. And Astrid's
suitcase art (and Astrid herself) catches the eye of an art professor
in Berlin who wants to buy them. But Astrid can't sell them, despite
their grinding poverty, because they represent her life, though she
does create a suitcase for the professor as a gift. (Astrid is fully
aware that the professor would like to sleep with her, and she would
have no qualms with doing so, except for her relationship with Paul.
She is totally willing to lay down for the father.)
And
yes, by interpreting her life in terms of the suitcases, Astrid is
going down the same path her mother did. She is casting her life in
aesthetic terms. But you never get the sense that Astrid will ever
care more about her life than the people who are important to her.
She's not THAT kind of aesthete. Then again, she put her mother on
the hook for a life in prison just to test how much she loved Astrid.
There are definitely some not-warm-and-cuddly aspects to Astrid's
personality.
Ingrid
wins her retrial even without Astrid's testimony (there were many
irregularities during the trial, it turns out). With Ingrid out of
prison, and Astrid knowing that she means so much to Ingrid that she
will risk life in prison, returning to California for a life of
relative ease as the celebrity poet/jailbird's daughter is
attractive. As bad as Ingrid was, she was also enthralling, and she
did give Astrid a childhood where she felt safe and protected, so
long as Ingrid was around, anyway. But Astrid chooses instead to stay
in chilly Berlin with Paul to build her own life.
That's
how the book ends, with Astrid choosing to remain with Paul but
realizing that at some level she will always love Ingrid, the mother
that gave her a childhood that enchanted her, even though she can't
really have that mother any more.
Now,
let's talk about the movie. I have saved some of my thoughts on the
book for the movie review, because there are some things the book did
much better than the movie, and some things the movie did better than
the book, and mostly it's a matter of how the two media differ,
though I do think Fitch is a better writer than Mary Agnes Donohue,
the woman who adapted the book to movie form. Then again, I think
Fitch is one of the finest writers we have, so I'm not throwing shade
on Donohue here.
First
of all, in any movie adaptation of a book, the big issue is what are
you going to include, and what are you going to drop? Donohue did a
great job, though I think the episodic nature of the book made things
easy for her. She discarded the whole Marvel Turlock episode, a sound
decision I think. Its only purpose, really, is to have Astrid
consider and reject the life of prostitution through her friendship
with Olivia Johnstone. When Johnstone ghosts Astrid after Turlock
calls the cops on her, Astrid realizes that the problem with
prostitution is that you trade the possibility of emotionally
satisfying sexual relationships for money … you get the goods, but
that's all you get. No love, the stuff Astrid has been starved of and
craves.
It's
a valid insight I suppose (I don't know enough about the lives of
prostitutes to speak knowledgeably on its validity) but it is really
a sidelight in relation to the main theme, Astrid's relationship with
her mother.
And
frankly, to a certain extent, this episode reads as if Fitch had
decided to “do” the prostitution issue as part of the story. It's
a realistic issue for a really beautiful young woman in the foster
care system to face, but not central to the story. Good call.
The
dog mauling was also dropped. I don't think it had any place in the
novel, it seemed to just come out of nowhere and go nowhere.
Likewise,
the Ramos episode was dropped. I agree with this even more … it was
by far the weakest episode. It's credible that some foster children
would be starved for the sake of money by their foster parents, but
it's a real sideline. It did nothing to advance Astrid's character.
The
casting was for the most part spot on. But there was one notable
departure, and that was Ray, Astrid's lover at Starr's home. I
expected a buffer Big Lebowski Jeff Bridges, what we got in the movie
was a young, buff Cole Hauser, very handsome, nice six pack abs
rather than the slightly pudgy waistline and three missing fingers
described in the book. The movie Ray is very much a romantic movie
leading man, very handsome, which works hard against the theme of
Astrid being attracted to Ray primarily because of the kindness he
shows her. You can see almost any adolescent girl finding movie Ray
attractive enough to stalk him in a deserted house and jump him like
a desperate cougar, as Astrid does.
This
brings up another difference between the movie and the book. The
sexual relationship between Astrid and Ray is so severely downplayed
that it does not really exist. We know Astrid likes Ray, but that's
about all we know. The hot and heavy sexual affair between
14-year-old Astrid and middle-aged Ray that was clearly described in
the book vanishes in the movie.
This
was not a good decision, I thought it really set the movie back,
because it made the character of Astrid considerably less deep and
complex. She wanted Ray, and you could sense her mother's headstrong
“I want what I want and will have it” inside her as she went
after him. Astrid had learned from Ingrid that men were easily
available, all you had to do was lure them in and they were yours,
and although Astrid was a lot less subtle than her mother with regard
to Ray, she got what she was after.
In
the movie Astrid is this hurt little innocent who never does anyone
any harm who toughens up due to all her misfortunes, becoming a
hard-bargaining street punk artist kind of woman. But in the book
there was always the sense of Ingrid's influence over Astrid, or
maybe just Astrid being like her mother by inheritance.
Imagine
how much depth it would have added to the movie to have a scene where
Ingrid has picked out one of her young poet admirers for her next
affair, a shot of her looking at him when he is unaware, a smile that
combines lust and anticipation but also has a cool, predatory element
to it. Then imagine a shot later on of Astrid looking at Ray in
exactly the same way, without consciously knowing she is doing so. It
would have added so much to the characterization.
Although I disagree with deep-sixing the Ray/Astrid affair, I think I know why they did
it. They did it because they feared they would not be able to get any
decent rating from the MPAA if they included it. Underage sex,
especially with middle aged men, is a sensitive topic in America. I
know, I write erotica and sell it on Amazon, and there are several
topics that will get your book banned on Amazon, and sexual
relationships involving underage characters in any way, however
carefully done, is right up there at the top. If you ignore a book
ban and keep submitting books with sex in them involving underage
characters, you will find your account banned on Amazon, a huge
financial blow to anyone who is trying to make money as a writer. (I
don't deal in this topic in my writings, but I have had several books
banned for other reasons, so I have learned to pay careful attention
to where the lines are drawn.)
I
think it's a shame that the Ray/Astrid affair was left out of the
movie, but I understand the motives of the filmmakers, and I don't
think it was an unreasonable decision on their part, even if it did
damage the story. They may have been in serious jeopardy of being
rated out of having an audience had they not done so.
There
is also the matter of Ingrid. On the one hand, the casting was spot
on, as it was in almost every case in the movie. (It's no surprise,
the book was full of juicy roles for women and juicy roles for women
in Hollywood are rare. I bet if the showrunners had insisted on
auditions that involved wrestling oiled and naked while reciting
lines from the movie, they would still have had an assortment of
heavy hitters lined up, naked, oiled and ready to wrestle.) Michelle
Pfeiffer is achingly beautiful and has the sharp features and
intensity that the role of Ingrid demands. She knocked her scenes out
of the park every time … you could sense the almost fanatical
aesthete lurking behind her beauty and her exquisite manners.
But
I noticed that most reviewers of the movie simply described Ingrid as
a narcissist and sociopath. None of them really got very far in
describing the aesthete element of Ingrid, her commitment to art and
poetry and the seriousness with which she takes them, and herself. I
don't think it was because the reviewers were unperceptive. I think
the movie didn't have the time to work those elements in properly.
Fitch had the luxury of building a complex, layered portrait of both
Ingrid and Astrid throughout the course of the novel, and without
that layered portrait, reviewers could not see that Ingrid's problem
was not that she was unable to feel normal emotions and empathy, but
that she had filtered all her feelings through her art, that Ingrid
the person might be someone more like her daughter Astrid. The thing
that really makes White Oleander successful is the depth and
complexity of Ingrid and Astrid … Ingrid isn't just a filler for
the label “sociopath,” she's a very complex person, just as
Astrid is more than a wounded dove who matures.
You
can easily miss that in the movie, and that's a shame, though I don't
feel it's the moviemaker's fault, so much as part of the movie
medium.
The
one cure for this issue I can think of would be to turn “White
Oleandar” into a miniseries, which would give the filmmakers much
more opportunity to flesh out Ingrid and Astrid's characters. (Though
I don't know of any visual media that would run such a series that would
allow the showrunners to deal honestly with the theme of Astrid's
sexuality, especially her relationship with Ray.)
The
place where the movie really shines, I think, is in the way it brings
breath and life into the characters. Allison Lohman does a great job
with Astrid, starting out as the wounded dove she is and toughening
up gradually as she is hardened by her experiences in foster care,
and as she slowly realizes how little she meant to Ingrid in the
grand scheme of things.
Rene
Zellweger also brings Claire to life. Most reviewers describe this as
a brilliant bit of acting, but I don't quite agree. The role seemed
to me to be right in Zellweger's wheelhouse, and she just did the
kind of acting she normally does, and knocked it out of the park. It
was a brilliant bit of casting, I'll grant you that.
Robin
Wright Penn (aka Robin Wright) did a fine job as Starr, but it wasn't
really a demanding role. She brought out as much to Starr's character
as there was, but it wasn't a role that called for depth of subtlety,
moving from a reformed alcoholic True Believer to an enraged
alcoholic with a gun wasn't a tough character arc in the movie.
Similarly,
Svetlana Efremova did a fine job playing Rena Gruschenka, but I
didn't see it as a difficult role. The sparsity of roles for female
actors that don't involve being “The Girl” or “The Mother” or
“The Kickass Action Chick” means that almost any decently cast
role is going to be filled by an actress who is WAAAY overqualified
for the material.
Speaking
of “The Girl” I thought Patrick Fugit did a fine job as “The
Boy” aka Paul Trout. Now, that is a bit unfair … There are layers
to Trout's character in the book that create all kinds of
opportunities for acting: he is the child of junkie parents whom he
does not respect (see: junkies) and he has a bad skin and he's a real
artist in his own right, with a lot of insight into Alison and
genuine feeling for her, and not just because she's as beautiful as
he is unbeautiful. He feels drawn to her because of their shared
status as outsider artists who have the deck stacked against them
because of their foster child status.
But
the same time compression issues that made so many reviewers see
Ingrid Magnussen as simply “The Sociopath Mom” work to make Trout
into just “The Boy.” Fugit does a fine job of playing Trout,
capturing his combination of diffidence as an unattached orphan and
confidence in his art, but there's just not enough screen time
devoted to him to fully flesh out his character -- another problem
that a miniseries could solve.
Barry
Kolker is even more severely cropped by the movie. His appearances
are confined to a few flashbacks showing the lead-up to his murder.
The movie gives us no idea that Kolker chased -- stalked, almost --
Ingrid for a long time before she lowered her standards and let him
become her lover. It gives us no idea who Kolker is, other than that
he is a wealthy, successsful pig who chases beauties like Ingrid
relentlessly and then dumps them in the most cruel and thoughtless
manner once he's had his fill of them.
To
be honest, that's all the role requires, basically, but it did leave
out the insight into Ingrid's taste and character that made Kolker's
pursuit of her ultimately successful.
These
problems with the movie underscore some of the problems with the
book, however. There were a few unanswered questions I would have
liked answered after reading the book. The largest one was: Ingrid …
how in the world did she become such a fucked-up person? What drove
her to become such a total aesthete? What made her so absolutely
independent of her family? Was she an orphan? We know nothing about
Ingrid's family, other than a notion that she was vaguely related to
Danish royalty.
These
gaps in our knowledge are mostly explained by the fact that the
entire book is written from Astrid's point of view. And Ingrid is
just the sort of person who would not tell Astrid about her family
because Ingrid deemed that to be unimportant. In fact, in the book
it's revealed that when Astrid was eight, Astrid's father, who
divorced Ingrid when Astrid was a toddler, had wanted to see Astrid,
but Ingrid refused him permission, without taking Astrid's interests
or needs into account at all, indeed, without informing Astrid of the
incident at all until the meeting where Astrid forced Ingrid to tell
her the truth about her life in exchange for her testimony.
The
cost of telling the story totally from Astrid's viewpoint is that we
don't understand what made Ingrid who she is, any more than Astrid
does, and as she's one of the central characters in the story that's
damned annoying.
Frankly,
I wish Astrid had asked Ingrid quite a few more questions about
Ingrid's family and early life while she had Ingrid tied over the
barrel in their negotiations about her testimony.
Another
place where I thought the book was weak was in dealing with issues of
money and class. It's established early on that Ingrid is dirt poor,
making eight bucks an hour, little more than minimum wage even in the
late 80s, early 90s, as a paste-up artist at a third rate celebrity
magazine. This is undoubtedly how a beautiful white woman got a
35-to-life sentence for murder, because for people with lawyers,
especially beautiful people with decent lawyers, that just doesn't
happen. And lawyers cost money.
But
the problem with poverty and the law isn't really central to the book
and it's not where it's a problem. It's a problem with Ingrid being
an aesthete and dirt poor. Frankly, it's much more common to find
hard-core aesthetes among the wealthy than the poor, because for the
poor, keeping yourself fed, clothed and housed demands a certain
amount of time, attention and energy that detracts considerably from
being an aesthete. When brutal necessity and aestheticism collide,
what you generally get is a greasy spot where the asestheticism used
to be.
We
are given hints and clues about how Ingrid deals with this: her
wealthier boyfriends show her the good life during their dalliances
with her. And as Astrid notes, Ingrid can eat nothing but peanut
butter for days without being the least bit bothered by it.
It's
even conceivable that Ingrid's extreme aestheticism is at least in
part a defense against the poverty she finds herself mired in. She
rejects her poverty through her aestheticism. Her job is just
something she has to do to support her poetry. It's not an uncommon
response to poverty among the aesthetically inclined, in fact, it's a
cliché, but the aestheticism is generally not taken nearly as far as
Ingrid takes hers.
Of
course, Ingrid could probably get out of her poverty if she were
willing to trade on her beauty and her artistic success as a poet and
marry or become the mistress of a wealthy man. But that would be
breaking one of her rules, and Ingrid doesn't break any of her rules
until she falls for Kolker, which turns out to have been a very bad
idea. Ingrid's rules are part of the reason she takes herself so
seriously, they are MUCH more important to her than any of the laws
of God and man, So when Ingrid breaks one of her rules to take Kolker
as a lover, and he then spurns her in the crudest possible way, why
that little man-rule about not killing others means NOTHING to
Ingrid.
I
think having the story be at least in part about a fine, noble (by
her own terms) struggling artist being slowly ground down by poverty
until circumstances and her own refusal to let herself be treated
like a poor, slutty wench (which is what Kolker does to her) would
have added a nice element of reality to the story … showing Ingrid
struggling to be Ingrid in a world that only sees her as the third
paste up artist to the left in some cubicle farm is something that
would add an element of universal appeal, done correctly. And Fitch
could have done it correctly, I have every confidence in her. She's a
hell of a writer.
Which
is a fine place to end my reviews of the movie and the book. Any
comments I have made about the novel's shortcomings are mere
quibbles, and the movie is a fine film that showcase the story as
well as the medium and the censorship it's subject to would permit.
Fact is, Frist has created some fascinating characters and a fine
story that you and I can profitably think about and learn from.
And
what I've done in writing this incredibly lengthy review is stretch
out my enjoyment of them both by thinking about them more and in
great detail. I also suspect that this exercise will inform my own
writing as well. If you have read the whole damned thing, then I hope
you will find that it has extended your enjoyment of “White
Oleander” as well. Because otherwise, you have to be feeling really
screwed right about now.
