Reel Rundown: ‘Wildcat’ portrays lupus, other struggles in life of Flannery O’Connor

The relationship between suffering and the creation of art has inspired many a movie, from biographies of Michelangelo to that of singers such as Amy Winehouse.

When it comes to writers, well, that could be seen as a whole genre in and of itself. Name the writer, from Hemingway to Fitzgerald, Iris Murdoch to Carson McCullers, and you’ll recognize the pain caused by drink, drugs, depression and dementia – sometimes all at once.

But you’ll also see the art. And, often as much, controversy.

In the case of Flannery O’Connor, the main problem was disease, lupus to be exact. Born in Savannah, Georgia, O’Connor – who died in 1964 at the tender age of 39 – is seen as the quintessential Southern writer. But her talent at putting words on a page is inextricably tied to the affliction that not only killed her father but contributed to her own death.

As portrayed in the film “Wildcat,” though, O’Connor felt other pressures as well. Constrained by her disease, she felt forced to live a cloistered life on a country farm with her mother Regina (played by Laura Linney). And, too, she struggled with mixed feelings about her Catholic upbringing.

O’Connor is played by Maya Hawke, daughter of the actress Uma Thurman and the film’s writer-director, Ethan Hawke. The screenplay for “Wildcat” (which Hawke co-wrote with Shelby Gaines) presents the writer mainly between the years when she studied at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop (beginning in 1945) and was diagnosed with lupus (circa 1952).

Yet “Wildcat” (a title that comes from one of O’Connor’s own short stories) is no simple chronological biographical study. Hawke’s conceit is to blend his vision of O’Connor’s real-life experiences – in Iowa, in New York and at home with her mother and aunt (played by Christine Dye) – with recreations of her stories, most of which involve a variety of dark themes.

Thus we see both her association with the writing teacher/note poet Robert “Cal” Lowell (which, in truth, occurred mostly through letters) and how she played out her longings in stories such as “Parker’s Back” (the titular character played by Rafael Casal) that feature a conflict between lust and religious faith. We see her represent the racist attitudes of her relatives in the story “Everything That Rises Must Converge.”

A note about O’Connor and racism: She was a women of her time and place, and she strived to capture both. In a letter to a friend about whether she might meet with James Baldwin at her home, she rejected the idea. “In New York it would be nice to meet him; here it would not,” she wrote. “I observe the traditions of the society I feed on – it’s only fair.”

As for director Hawke’s film, it is an admirable, if at times jumbled effort to blend biography and the art that inspired its subject. And as the writer herself, the actress Hawke shows a remarkable ability to inhabit a character, warts and all.

O’Connor herself might have opted for something a bit more ironic and biting than is portrayed in “Wildcat.” Then again, she’d likely relate all too well with the source of her own particular, often peculiar, stabs at creating literary art.