Dolores Claiborne

Year of release : 1995

Run time : 2h12min

Genre : Drama / Psychological Thriller

Cast : Kathy Bates, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Christopher Plummer, John C.Reilly

The movie is based on Stephen King's 1992 book of the same name.

Dolores and the woman she takes care of,seem to be having a fight,and the woman falls down the staircase. Dolores looks for something through the kitchen,frantically, as she's trying to k1ll her,but she can't,and the postman finds her standing above her with a rolling pin.

 

In New York, Dolores' daughter, a successful journalist, Selena St. George, receives the news of her mother being arrested for murder. Selena goes back to Little Tall Island in Maine, to see her mother,who refuses a lawyer.

Upon arriving, she sees the way her mother is being treated by people,and the decrepit state her house is in,mostly due to people writing obscenities on the walls and breaking the windows, as everybody thinks she k1lled her husband years before,during the eclipse,and now Vera.

As Selena is back,the past starts to bleed through,as Dolores is taken by the memories,and we see her life with her drunk and abusive(verbally and physically ) husband. Selena doesn't seem to remember much about her father,except the fact he was loving and she loved him. Dolores paints a different picture of him.

Selena has mood swings,takes a lot of pills,and drinks a lot .

As her daughter stays with her for the weekend, Dolores is determined to tell her everything,about her father and about Vera,the woman she supposedly k1lled.

I personally loved the movie. It had the weird ability to make me cry and then make me laugh in the next scene with something they said. In the end, the movie is about a mother who did everything to protect her daughter,who now hates her,forgetting everything.

 

I loved the way the movie was shot,how the present blends with the past,the past having brighter colors,as if it belonged to a better era. I love how Dolores' memories bleed through as she enters the house,seeing herself with her daughter when she was a kid. There's this amazing scene in which Selena is talking,and Dolores sees her husband behind her in her mind's eye.

The movie really captured the book vibe,the way one sees things when they read,in their mind's eye,it really pulls you in,into its atmosphere. It really felt like I was in the characters' head,knowing what they were thinking and feeling. There are 2 other movies which managed that,for me, Stigmata and The Broken.

The movie had beautiful colors, and good visual effects .

The actors were great,especially the leads, Kathy Bates, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Judy Parfitt ,who played Vera.

The soundtrack was good, melancholic .

The movie made 46.4 million dollars at the box office, against a budget of 13 million. It received positive reviews from the critics, especially for the leads' performances, Kathy Bates and Jennifer Jason Leigh, Kathy Bates stating in an interview that Dolores was her best performance.

Time magazine put the movie in their top 10 list of the best Stephen King adaptations.

Kathy Bates and Jennifer Jason Leigh were nominated for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress at the Saturn Awards.

 

The movie is for rent / sale on Amazon, AppleTv, Fandango at Home.

Rating : It's so money!