Indie dramedies about dysfunctional families are a dime a dozen, but small films as richly crafted as A Little Prayer are something like a miracle. Written and directed by Angus MacLachlan, the film has the precise detail of a great short story, with characters expertly calibrated to their settings, and the narrative drama naturally unfurling from within them. MacLachlan has directed films before but he’s probably most known for writing the 2005 film Junebug which, among other things, got Amy Adams her first Oscar nomination. Like Junebug, A Little Prayer takes place in the rural, suburban outposts of the American South Atlantic. Families are close, almost all white, and thoroughly formed by traditions that they protect vociferously, even if they don’t fully understand them.
David Strathairn plays Bill, the second generation owner of a local, prosperous sheet metal company in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He works with his son, David (Will Pullen), whom he’s grooming to be his replacement. Both Bill and David are military veterans. Bill was a captain in Vietnam, while David served in Afghanistan. Most of the men in the town have served in some capacity, and their varied degrees of trauma permeate all levels of life in the otherwise tranquil neighborhood. Bill lives with his wife, Venida (Celia Weston), and David lives with his wife, Tammy (Jane Levy), in small house behind their parents. Tammy wakes each morning to prepare breakfast for all four of them, and lunch for the two men. Her dutiful practicality is a serene presence, providing polite order in an occasionally volatile household.
Part of that volatility comes in the form of Bill and Venida’s daughter Patti (Anna Camp), who arrives unannounced with her own daughter Hadley (Billie Roy). She has (once again) left her husband, Cassius, who has descended into an opioid-influenced stupor. Patti is the mirror image of Tammy: uncouth, thoughtless, clinically self-obsessed, and shockingly quick to temper with her own child. Tammy takes it all in stride, even providing Hadley with some much needed mothering. It doesn’t seem to matter to her that this isn’t her blood family, and that level of commitment only strengthens Bill’s adoration for his daughter-in-law. When Bill begins to suspect that David may be having an affair with the company’s executive assistant, Narcedalia (Dascha Polanco), he’s at a loss. How could a man disrespect a wife as sweet and devoted as Tammy? And how does David and Patti’s behavior reflect on his own performance as a father?
Being a military man, and the head of a company for many years, Bill can’t comprehend David’s lack of discipline and emotional carelessness. He tries to set his son straight, but he finds his authority has turned impotent and ineffective. David can easily dismiss him, claim that it’s none of his business, turn a cold shoulder. For Patti, Bill debates hiring a lawyer, having her stay at their house, pulling her out of her destructive marriage, but Venida explains that their children must be left to correct their own mistakes. This is a common sentiment throughout the script, that broken folks must put the work in toward fixing themselves. You can sense that this was something that Bill used to believe in as well, before reality came to his door, and now he feels helpless in the face of his children’s circumstance.
And when he thinks of his children, he is thinking of Tammy as well. Tammy, the one person within his three children who seems to live with any sense, who appears oblivious to the harm being done to her. In brief moments, MacLachlan allows us to spend time with Tammy away from the rest of the family. It’s in these unspoken, lingering moments that we realize that Tammy is not the flaccid doormat we may suspect her to be. Her awareness is matched by her stamina, constantly measuring the weakness of her husband against the love she shares for her extended family. She finds her own solace in the security of the suburban unit, but is becoming lonely in her own marriage. A Little Prayer balances between the helpless plight of Bill and the pensive melancholy of Tammy, perfectly demonstrating the complexities of a family whose most hurtful actions go unsaid.
MacLachlan is from the Winston-Salem area, which explains his natural understanding of the locale and its residents. This is not a political film, though MacLachlan is incredibly deft in paying credence toward the political realities of the area. Narcedalia’s Caribbean-Hispanic background is never directly commented on in the film, but it’s a fact that seems crucial to the degree of hurt that Bill feels about his son’s actions. Surround by whites, however well-meaning, places Narcedalia in a precarious power imbalance that only reveals itself over the course of the film. Keisha Tillis plays the film’s sole Black character; her role is a bit of a spoiler, but there’s a shrewdness to the way A Little Prayer acknowledges her, even as the characters may not. There’s no outward red-state-ness to this community, but part of the script’s brilliance is the way it reflects on that conservative presence, never letting it define people, but never letting them escape it either.
Like Junebug, the actors here have to play the subtext way more than they ever have to play the text itself. Strathairn, always a dependable, veteran performer in any context, gives one of his very best performances here as a man forced to confront the totality of all he can’t control. The solutions for Patti and David all seem so simple, but Bill can’t seem to factor in their passions or comprehend their contradictions. There is guilt there for sure, guilt of what he may have lacked as a father, whatever contribution he may have made to their emotional disarray. Bill’s crisis is his own sense of responsibility. Can he forgive his son for what he’s done to his daugher-in-law? Can he forgive his daughter for what she’s inflicting on his granddaughter? Should he? All of this is translated through the most subtle of remarks and glances, in one of the best performances of Strathairn’s already great career.
As Tammy, Levy is a revelation. Always charming, A Little Prayer gives her an opportunity that she’s never gotten before, allowing her to really plumb the depths of a deeply sad individual. She shares the aforementioned scene with Keisha Tillis, and its one of the very best sequences in the film. Perhaps least surprising is the ingenious work of Celia Weston, a common MacLachlan collaborator. Weston has perfected the writer-director’s tragi-comic cadence, cementing it into her own South Carolina drawl. Her Venida is a Weston specialty, the sassy, no-nonsense old woman who reveals herself to be much more knowledgeable than she initially lets on. The scenes between her and Strathairn are equal parts heartbreaking and hilarious, their performances smacking of intimacy and familiarity.
A Little Prayer‘s ending is exactly as it should be: unpredictable yet perfectly in sync with the characters and events we’ve seen up until that point. A final scene between Strathairn and Levy gives us the emotional catharsis we needed, and allows the two characters to (finally) speak their own feelings without fear or judgment. Like a lot in this film, it’s a very small moment in terms of action, but incredibly impactful in its performance and its direction. MacLachlan has proven himself a deft filmmaker, intelligently eschewing ostentatious style for the power of his incredible actors. This is simply one of the best films of the year, and one hopes many more people get the opportunity to see it.
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Written and Directed by Angus MacLachlan