52 Films by Women Vol 6. 40. FATHER STU (Director: Rosalind Ross)
Father Stu is not your typical film by a woman
director. It is the passion project of producer-star Mark Wahlberg, who plays the
title role and bankrolled the production to the tune of ‘millions and millions’
of dollars. Based on a true story, it is a biopic of the Montana amateur boxer,
Stuart Ignatius Long (1963-2014), who became a priest. Wahlberg runs the full
gamut of showing he is in great shape at the start of the film in scenes set in
the 1980s to being afflicted by a debilitating illness and a prosthetic face in
the closing stages. Having failed to interest his first-choice director, David
O. Russell, with whom he worked on Three
Kings and The Fighter, Wahlberg shopped the project to debutante
feature writer-director Rosalind Ross, the partner of Mel Gibson (Gibson played
Wahlberg’s dad in the comedy Daddy’s
Home 2). Ross’ work is
proficient. She veers away from one scene that a male director might have
embraced, the consummation of the title character’s pursuit of a Mexican
American woman, Carmen (Teresa Ruiz); there are no sex scenes here. Otherwise,
her staging is functional, though the film walks a tightrope between coarse,
expletive filled humour and a character who, as the title suggests, embraces
Catholic religion and seeks ordination.
Gibson, who has a
role in the film, naturally as the title character’s extremely wayward father,
is one of cinema’s most visible Catholics, having written and directed The Passion of the Christ, which to me was little more than religious
torture porn. It remains one of American cinema’s most commercially successful,
independently produced films. When he was Wahlberg’s age (51) - a mere 15 years
separates the two men – Gibson had taken a sabbatical from acting to stay
behind the camera. Without dwelling on his life off screen, it is fair to say
that he is no longer the bankable, charismatic star he once was, though he
retains the capacity to surprise, evidenced by the success of the 2016 pacifist
World War Two drama, Hacksaw
Ridge, starring Andrew
Garfield, which he directed.
Gibson is the second
person we see in Father Stu. As Bill Long, he sits in an armchair clasping
a beer can while berating his young son, Stu (Tenz Call) who is prancing round
a dimly lit room – the blinds are closed - singing along to a record. ‘The only
thing you have in common with Elvis is a love of hamburgers,’ moans Bill, who
is the kind of father who withholds approval, nursing instead bitterness and
rage. The next time we see Stu, he’s an adult (played by Wahlberg), dancing
around the boxing ring. The boxing announcer describes Stu as ‘past his prime’,
an on-the-nose phrase if ever I heard one. Stu goes some distance in the fight
before losing - we don’t see the knockout, just the accumulation of wounds. In
a doctor’s office, he is advised never to box again – the real-life Long
suffered a jaw injury. In spite of having very dodgy facial hair, whose
evolution over the decades represents the Taming of the Stu, our hero heads to
Los Angeles to pursue a career as an actor. ‘Look up your father while you’re
there,’ advises Stu’s mother, Kathleen (Jacki Weaver, still retaining the
capacity to be the most threatening person in the room as she fixes Wahlberg
with a determined stare).
Stu and his father
are bound by a tragedy – the death of Stu’s younger brother. Before leaving for
LA, Stu stops by his brother’s grave late in the evening and punches a statue
of Jesus. Police appear. ‘You’re Bill Long’s son?’ an officer half-asks, half-tells
Stu, shining a torch at him. ‘That’s right.’ The officer snorts. ‘Like father,
like son.’
Checking in to a
motel, where he fails to impress the desk clerk, Stu takes a job in the
butcher’s section of a grocery store, asking (it seems) every customer whether
they work in movies. None of them do. Stu visits a male producer, who says he
might have work for him if he is prepared to do something for him. The camera
pans to the guy’s crotch. Stu pins the guy against the wall by way of reply. ‘Can
you call the next person in,’ asks the producer feebly as Stu leaves. After Stu
continues to vent his anger, knocking over a piece of equipment, the producer
calls to his assistant: ‘oh, can you bring in another camera?’
Stu gets his big
break – a mop commercial, which Kathleen conveniently watches on television
after a telephone call with her son. This allows him to rent his own apartment.
By this point, the film has paid homage to two of Wahlberg’s
roles, that of Dirk Diggler, the porn star protagonist of the 1970s-set drama, Boogie
Nights, and Micky Ford, the boxing protagonist of The Fighter
– in the latter, Wahlberg’s work was overlooked in favour of his co-star,
Christian Bale. Wahlberg is associated with roles where his character does
grunt work, an officer never the chief. Generally, he’s starred in more box-office
hits than misses and has done solid work for the actor-turned-director Peter
Berg, with whom he has worked five times, from Lone Survivor to Spenser
Confidential. He’s pretty good
as the straight man in comedies such as The Other Guys, Ted
(and its sequel) and Daddy’s Home. For the most part, he stays
away from high-concept and comic-book movies.
Father Stu departs from the real Stuart Long’s
story when charting Stu’s initiation into Catholicism. He embraces Catholicism
to impress a (fictitious) Mexican American woman (the aforementioned Carmen)
who he meets at the grocery store where he works – she wants tinned fish; he
tries to interest her in meat. Her resistance to him – in true rom-com, but
also stalker fashion – spurs him on. He spots her entering a church and follows
her inside. There he meets a group of earnest individuals with whom he has nothing
in common, who are seeking ordination. One of them introduces himself as Ham
(Aaron Moten). ‘That’s my name,’ he insists, continuing the use of meat-based
humour. All the young men in the room are clean-shaven in neat, freshly ironed
clothes, in contrast with Stu who looks like he has mistaken the church for a
truck stop. The men deduce Stu’s motives straight away. Stu is happy to
volunteer as ‘security’. He ends up offering to help Carmen in a kindergarten
class. ‘I’m good at acting,’ he insists.
Stu is far from the straight and narrow, calling on his
father’s place of work, a building site and trying to find his dad’s car keys.
‘Your kid’s here,’ Bill is told while he operates a crane. Stu is unsuccessful
in his attempt to borrow Bill’s car. The pair are mutually antagonistic, the
necessary prerequisite for a character arc. By the end (not a spoiler) Bill is
pushing Stu in a wheelchair to get to church on time after his car breaks down.
Some set pieces would play better if we could hear Stu’s
dialogue. At first, I thought it was just me, but Washington Post
reviewer, Michael
O’Sullivan described Stu as ‘imperfectly intelligible, thanks to a mumbling
delivery by the film’s star’. Stu is at his most articulate speaking Spanish at
the dinner table in front of Carmen’s family. I know that Wahlberg works hard
in front of the camera. In the dubbing theatre, though, he might have
struggled.
Some scenes are ropey. A mysterious stranger in a bar sets
Stu off on his righteous path right before a motorcycle accident almost kills
him. Similarly, after Stu is diagnosed with Myositis and muscle deterioration (‘it’s
like Lou Gehrig’s disease’) he visits a prison on crutches and addresses a
group of inmates, giving one of them a barely credible
‘your-family-might-not-love-you-but-Jesus-is-there-for-you’ speech. The inmate
appears taken in by it, the (non-Christian) audience less so.
In one of the better scenes, Stu prepares from his baptism
in front of Carmen by taking off his shirt and showing off his muscles – a
meet-cute if ever there was one. He coaxes Carmen into a karaoke duet with him
of a Johnny and June Carter Cash song, where she out-performs him - in Church,
she’s had a lot of practice.
The film’s comic tone is wobbly. Bill rushes to hospital
after Stu’s motorcycle accident convinced that he is dead and is disappointed
to see Stu alive on a gurney – this after complained that a vending machine
took his dollar. Bill initially expresses scepticism about Stu’s conversion but
ends up impressed.
The blend of fact and fiction makes for a coherent, if not
especially effective drama, with Stu encountering a late obstacle to ordination
in the form of Malcolm McDowell as Monsignor Kelly. ‘You’re asking the Catholic
church to invest in you,’ he tells Stu, preparing him for the worst. Stu can’t
help using coarse street language but insists on his sincerity, with all the
passion of a basketball star being benched. In the end, in the film’s version
of events, Monsignor Kelly pulls some strings and Father Stu administers at a
care home, inspiring residents to queue round the block. Who knew there was that
much sin in care homes?
As a caption describes Stu’s death, we see him in the boxing
ring in his prime, in a final cinematic gesture of pathos. Wahlberg might have
seen this as his shot at an Oscar but in reality, Stu converts to Catholicism
out of self-interest and rarely helps others, except on his own terms. He tries
to encourage a young man to join in a basketball game. ‘I don’t need to go out
on the court to know that I’m bad at it,’ the young man tells him. I expected
Stu to turn him into a great player, but it does not happen. Besides,
administering Catholicism in a care home is not the same as being on the street:
‘Brian, you coveted your neighbour’s shower gel. That’s two Hail Marys and a bar
of soap.’ This religious drama feels surplice to requirements.
Reviewed at Cineworld Dover, Kent, South-East England,
Tuesday 3rd May 2022, 19:30 screening
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