Educational Media Reviews Online

Leave your predatory animals, dictators, and natural disasters aside, documentary directors. As any novelist of manners will tell you, if you really want to go for the gusto, take on your family as a film subject and see how long you last. This is exactly the mission that director Tara Wray is on in her first film, Manhattan, Kansas: to attempt an objective film about her estranged, unbalanced mother.

We begin this journey in the other Manhattan—New York. Tara, now in her mid-twenties, prepares us for her reunion with her estranged mother, Evie. Tara narrates the story of her childhood in Manhattan, Kansas, where transience was the norm. The nearly solitary relationship with her mother, to the point where Evie homeschooled Tara, came to its natural end when Tara decided to leave the nest and go to college. Evie’s response to this act of independence was to pass out naked and drunk for her daughter to find her. Later, during a time when Evie was dating a peer of Tara’s, she threatened to kill both herself and her daughter.

When Tara gives herself a pre-game pep talk on the drive to the reunion, asserting “This is my film—she is my subject,” we know she is doomed to fail. But watching Tara’s failure to take control over the power her mother still yields on her psyche is what makes the film fascinating. The subtleness of communication between a mother and daughter provides enough cues to observe as an hour of an extreme nature show does. And like a Jane Austen book, Tara and her mother’s relationship feels familiar to all of us: even if our mothers aren’t searching for the geodetic center of the United States, as Tara’s is.

In families, communicating loudly doesn’t require a dramatic change in one’s tone of voice or physical passion or violence. Simply one misstated word will do. In this film, too, little shouting occurs. Nor are there any major surprises: I won’t be spoiling the film to say Tara and Evie both end up alive at the end. My enthusiastic recommendation for this film is primarily for those interested in mother-daughter relationships, from Deborah Tannen readers to Steel Magnolia fans. Those studying communication, psychology, and women’s health will find value in this film, as will those film viewers and film students simply interested in autobiographical films with appealing stories.

Awards

• Audience Award Winner SXSW Film Festival