The Jilting of Granny Weatherall

I had to watch this as part of my high school English class, so I had just finished reading the original version immediately before viewing it.

It was interesting to see the story put into a visual medium, but there was very little dramatic license taken with it.

The acting is not bad, albeit dated---even by my high school standards (the video was a full 10 years old then). I remember the actor playing the role of George causing some comic relief for the girls in the class; they often referred to him as "that pretty boy that looks like he's constipated".

It's not a bad rendition, all things considered. For young people that may be having trouble reconciling some of the things that are described in the story, the movie does a good job of clearing some of the hazier matters up (for me in particular, when she is trying to tell her relatives a list of things she wants to leave to her friends, family, and relations, I could not quite understand why the people surrounding her weren't seeming to pay attention---this is clarified in the film by having her inner monologue being clearly audible, but her character in reality is so far gone that she is not speaking clearly enough to be understood).

_The Jilting of Granny Weatherall_, being told in stream-of-consciousness, could easily have been a cinematic tour-de-force. Unfortunately, Haines drains any interest out of it by trying to present it in a literal manner. The story would have been nothing special were it not for the stream of consciousness technique. Instead of trying to express Granny's feelings, Haines simply gives us static reenactments of events in her past, filmed in such conventional ways that we do not get much of Granny's attitude toward how she remembers things.

In this TV movie. It is simply an old dying woman having flashbacks. Had Porter's story been given an imaginative director, it could have easily been made into a remarkable and astonishing film. Instead, we get a lame Cliffs Notes version of the story.

I would recommend this film only to curious Porter fans, but I don't expect they'll like it. Anyone who took interest enough to read this review is referred to the short story, which was very innovative in its day. It could make an innovative film someday, but this definitely is not it.

If you've not read Katherine Anne Porter's original story, you're likely to watch this and wonder what is the point. It bears little resemblance to the story on which it is based, and viewers are likely to be confused by what seems to be a series of disjointed and unrelated flashbacks. If you have read the original short story, you're likely to be disappointed by this attempt to translate it into a visual medium. Towards the end it finally starts to line up with the short story, but it's not enough to save this attempt.