Higher Ground (2011)/Movie Review

Release Date:  08/26/2011   Run Time:  109min.

Genre(s):  Drama

Distributor(s):  Sony Pictures Classics

Plot

Actress Vera Farmiga makes her feature directorial debut with this adaptation of Carolyn S. Briggs' autobiography, This Dark World: A Memoir of Salvation Found and Lost. Haunted by a low sense of self-worth ever since her childhood in the 1960s, Corrine finds her happy family falling apart by the time she reaches high school, and seeks comfort in the arms of talented young guitarist Ethan. Later compelled to join a tight-knit fundamentalist community that offers both security and spiritual nourishment, Corrine and Ethan discover a sense of peace that ultimately proves short-lived once the more conservative tenets of the congregation start to take priority. Her illusions of the ideal faith-based community shattered, Corrine begins to question her entire belief system as her life starts to unravel once again. Joshua Leonard and John Hawkes co-star.

Director Vera Farmiga

Executive Producer(s) Jonathan Burkhart , Brice DalFarra , Lauren Munsch

Writer(s) Tim Metcalfe   Carolyn S. Briggs

Starring: Vera Farmiga , Joshua Leonard , John Hawkes , Dagmara Dominczyk , Norbert Leo Butz

Review

The spiritual journey of one modernizing woman raises the bar.

By Joshua Rothkopf

Joshua Leonard and Vera Farmiga in Higher Ground

Religious faith is the trickiest subject to tackle in an art form that can’t help but literalize—Ingmar Bergman and Martin Scorsese both found it agonizing. So God only knows why actor Vera Farmiga, probably best known for her sexy therapist in The Departed, chose it for her directorial debut. Higher Ground, a natural interweaving of period detail from the 1960s through the ’80s as well as a subtle critique written by a believer (memoirist Carolyn S. Briggs), must count as proof of miracles. Like Todd Haynes’s masterful Safe, it is the complex story of one woman’s adventure with an evangelical group.

But to Farmiga’s own ambitious credit, this is not a cult, but a serious group of Christians, portrayed as well-meaning people if still blinkered by their views on women, independence and fulfillment. After a beautiful prologue (partly starring the director’s younger sister, Taissa), the plot centers on Corinne (Farmiga), a warm, spiritual woman. She’s settled with Ethan (the excellent Leonard)—her husband and a failed rock star—into a deeply observant lifestyle in suburban upstate New York. They and their friends suffer from the typical problems of the day, sexual satisfaction being an especially thorny one, and the solutions of the local pastor begin to ring hollow. Funny and heartbreaking, this is a movie that would have made the ’80s-era Jonathan Demme, attuned to American anxieties, blush with pride.