Curse Of The Starving Class

Weston Tate (James Wood) is strung out on alcohol, hounded by creditors, estranged from wife Ella (Kathy Bates), and ruined by bad investments. Ella dreams of selling the farm out from under him for a profit and fleeing to Paris. Their two children Wesley (Henry Thomas) and Emma (Kristen Fiorella), nearing maturity, are troubled by the loss of childhood the dissolution of the farm represents. Each family member claims to live outside the starving class, making references to the full refrigerator and those who are truly hungry. Yet the parents' neglect of basic domestic gestures--fixing a door and buying the groceries--points to inconsolable depression and want. In an act of desperation Ella has a one-night stand with a shyster Realtor, the same who conned her husband into buying a worthless plot of land in the middle of the desert. Returning home she learns that Westin has sold the farm for a loss, and is passed out cold in the barn.

Westin awakens in a delirium and stumbles about in the rain. He finds a sick lamb collapsed in the mud and believes himself to have been saved by this symbol of redemption. He nurses the lamb, bathes, dresses in clean clothes, repairs the house, does the laundry, and feels that he can right all the wrongs. Young Wesley, however, has no illusions left. He slaughters the lamb and then fishes his father's old stinking clothes out of the garbage and puts them on, affirming mother's conviction that there is a curse handed down from one generation to the next. Westin's family coaxes him to flee before his creditors kill them all. Emma departs next, leaving son and mother in a house of sighs and silence, the noise of a freeway in the distance.

The story focuses on themes common to Shepard's works--economic and spiritual bankruptcy in rural America, failed ambitions, and the complexities of family dynamics--but the translation from stage to screen is a difficult one, despite the screenplay by producer Beresford who did an Oscar-winning job of transmuting "Driving Miss Daisy" to celluloid. But this film moves in rhythm to the ennui and despair of the drama, and is tedious and slow. The unquestionably first-rate cast never lets you forget they are acting. Several theatrical gestures, (such as a nude scene with the ever-so-significant lamb), fail to convince and instead become absurd. The downbeat CURSE OF THE STARVING CLASS can perhaps best be "enjoyed" for its literary ambitions, but otherwise indicates that some properties are best left on the boards of Off-Broadway. (Substance abuse, nudity, sexual situations, adult situations, profanity.) leave a comment