Ruth em Questão

Laura Dern is one of my favorite actresses just for her work in Inland Empire and her stunning work in Enlightened. This film usually gets the least mentions within Payne's filmography and is probably considered his weakest, and so I was surprised and enjoyed it a hell of a lot, especially coming off of a big disappointment. Like Election, it's definitely more in the comedy-territory and while, again, it may not amount to all that much, it's still a hell of an enjoyable ride. And, of course, Laura Dern is great, she's proved she can play this sort of ditzy, unaware character and she nails it. This is definitely recommended and rather underrated

I thought "Citizen Ruth" was fine, biting satire and a movie that had to be made at some point in America's history. Like all good movies, it is not really about the subject at hand - in this case, the abortion issue - but about something deeper and more far reaching. "Citizen Ruth" is about people who get so devoted to a cause they think important to humanity that they forget to consider actual human beings.

Of course, the unavoidable problem with a movie such as this is that almost all of the characters are unsympathetic. Regardless of what opinion one has on the abortion issue, both factions behave badly and they do it supposedly on behalf of the most irresponsible, irredeemable, unlikable (but still watchable) glue sniffer around, Ruth. The effect can be a little wearing, especially at the end.

The movie alleviates this problem by including one wonderful character, Harlan, the cynical Gulf War vet. He unceremoniously plunks his prosthetic leg on the kitchen table. He eats shirtless standing over a sink. He sees Ruth as a person, albeit a diminished one, and is willing to give her what she really wants (money) in order to, as he says, level the playing field, even though he knows she will squander it in a matter of days and tells her so. While he is on the prochoice side, he sees the humor in the situation, as evidenced by his wonderful grin and does not seem to lose track of his own humanity. His dialogue is priceless. Where everybody else speaks in rhetoric he cuts to the chase. My favorite retort of his occurs when the sanctimonious Dale, a pro-lifer, spouts out some Biblical condemnation at him and he responds by giving the exact location in the Bible of the quote. Naturally the actor playing the part, M. C. Gainey, deserves much of the credit for creating this appealing character.

The movie has many other merits but Harlan is my own personal favorite

Ruth Stoops (Laura Dern) is paint-huffing homeless white trash. She has four kids but doesn't have custody of any of them. She goes to her brother to ask for money and he offers $15. She passes out in public and gets arrested. She's pregnant again. The angry judge overcharges her and she's pressured to get an abortion. In jail, she is befriended by Diane Siegler (Swoosie Kurtz) and her team of religious pro-life protesters. Norm (Kurtwood Smith) and Gail Stoney (Mary Kay Place) bail them out and take Ruth into their home. The Stoneys have two kids, rebellious Cheryl (Alicia Witt) and Matt. They take Ruth to a fake clinic to talk her out of the abortion and make her a media case for their group "The Baby Savers". Ruth struggles with her addition and her aversion for notoriety. Diane is actually a pro-choice spy and helps her get away from the Stoneys. Diane calls in Harlan (M.C. Gainey), her lesbian partner Rachel (Kelly Preston), and other pro-choice activists. Her abortion becomes a national issue, and the two sides bring their national leaders Jessica Weiss (Tippi Hedren) and Blaine Gibbons (Burt Reynolds).

Alexander Payne tackles this divisive issue with humor. It skewers both side although the pro-lifers get the greater ridicule. The tricky subject matter is tough to get right and the humor is hard to calibrate. I don't think this is funny for everybody. Laura Dern delivers a complicated and endearing character. The level of difficulty is very high and Payne navigates it with great skills.

Unlike every other young American filmmaker, buzzing like moths around the asthmatic short guy from Little Italy, Alexander Payne has a pleasingly atypical role model: Luis Bunuel. His brilliant ELECTION sets down a number of Bunuel tropes in the chain restaurants and badly lit high schools of Omaha, Nebraska, and his first feature, CITIZEN RUTH, is even closer to the wall-eyed master's bone.

The heroine, played by Laura Dern, is named Ruth Stoops, and that's an understatement. Ruth begins the picture as a dumpster-diving skank whose preoccupations are birthing bastards and huffing glue. Through a BEING THERE-ish chain of circumstances, Ruth finds herself in the hands of a family of Baby Savers (Payne's version of Operation Rescue), and then a squadron of mostly lesbian, bourgeois, goddess-worshiping, Frida-Kahlo-T-shirt-wearing pro-choice activists. Though the movie cannily found a home with the Sundance crowd as a "satire" of both sides of the "abortion debate," the topicality is strictly surface. CITIZEN RUTH is a straight-up-Bunuelian demonstration of the hundred facets of human mendacity and venality, cloaking their shivering skins in the warm fabric of Morals. It's a cheerfully made thesis movie about the universality of hypocrisy.

Payne has a curious, sure, light, on-the-money touch. Every detail you notice--from a Baby Saver mom's Tupperware samovar of cherry Kool-Ade, to Kurtwood Smith's Sav-On uniform (with a button that sadly screams "Ask Me!")--is ever so slightly exaggerated and perfectly true. Payne's rendering of his home town Omaha, its wan, angry Christians, and the kinda-gay, kinda-liberal-artsy interlopers, makes the Coen Brothers look both pizzazzier and much nastier. The single-mindedness of the movie is oddly pleasing when it's mated with such a certain, gingerly approach. (Payne's tastes run gratifyingly wide: his jokes, and his music, seem derived from the works of James L. Brooks.) There's a two-dimensionality about CITIZEN RUTH that makes it less deeply satisfying than ELECTION, but this is one smart filmmaker. As the millennium rolls in, the likes of Wes Anderson and Kevin Smith will be gagging on his dust.

Laura Dern gives what should have been an oscar-winning performance in this satire of the abortion controversy. However this movie is not for the main stream. She plays a homeless drug user and a user period. Not a nice person. She has four kids in three different places. The first scene depicts her trying to hit up her ex for money displaying only a token concern for her kids. But by the end of the movie you kinda like her (well, almost... you still would never let her come to your house). Anyway when she is picked up for the 16th time that year by the cops for sniffing household stuff (anything she can find: glue, paint, brake fluid...), the authorities find out that she is pregnant. The DA charges her with criminal endangerment of the fetus, but hints that if she has an abortion the charge will go away. While in the city jail she meets up with the Baby Savers and a tug-of-war ensues between them and the Right-To-Choose people. The portrayal of both sides is so devastatingly accurate that I doubt either side would know they're being lampooned. This movie rates with Cold Turkey and Drop Dead Gorgeous for its cynical, but hilarious portrait of American Life.