The Stone Angel

Synopsis

Ellen Burstyn gives a tour-de-force performance in this much-anticipated adaptation of Margaret Laurence’s landmark Canadian novel. Now living with her son Marvin (Dylan Baker), elderly Hagar (Ellen Burstyn) is brought to a nursing home to see what she thinks. Her response is easily predicted, and she later bolts from her son’s house, determined to find a seaside home she remembers from her youth. Throughout this journey, chapters in her life coalesce and we come to know the radiant young woman – scion of her father’s mercantile empire – who is disowned when she marries the rough, bold Bram Shipley (Cole Hauser). Romantic illusions soon dissipate, and Hagar begins to think her husband is beneath her. Her disdain for him, exacerbated by discontent with her own unfulfilled ambitions, incites a hereditary flaw as she denies her children the parental approval she so desired from her father. In the present, Hagar finds her way to the seashore, but has little time left to amend a lifetime of unacknowledged mistakes. Writer and director Kari Skogland adapts the well-loved novel faithfully and with integrity, bringing the fictional landmark of Manawaka vividly to life.