Battlecreek (Alison Eastwood, 2015): USA

Reviewed by Markus Linecker. Viewed at the Santa Barbara Film Festival 2016.

 Alison Eastwood is as formidable as her father, both in style and in content. Battlecreek, her sophomore film, has a strong female lead whose triumph over her circumstances can be appreciated by both women and men in the audience. Eastwood does not look to whine about disabilities, but to show how people really should be viewed as “other-abled.”

Henry has a severe light-phobic skin condition, and lives with his slightly wacky mother who reads palms. He is a caring person who wants to help everyone; an artist who paints mirrors in all his spaces. He is unable to go outside during the day, so at night he works at a gas station with Arthur, an old friend of his father. These late-night hours are the haven for intellectual contemplations of philosophy, poetry, and real life. Alison, who comes into town with a broken-down car and something to hide, meets Henry and Arthur there and they direct her to waitressing at the nearby restaurant while they repair her car. Alison is attracted to Henry, but his mother goes into protective mode. Both Alison and Henry’s pasts come back to complicate matters further.

Eastwood says she set this in a Mid-West setting so that it would be timeless, sleepy and untouched. There were no time markers, like cell phones or anything. There are bullies, and a sweet waitress in a diner creating a homey feeling. This is the Americana that people are nostalgic for, but Alison coming in unbalances that. Henry himself fits in and yet is also different, so they spark to the commonality, and unwrap each other’s layers.

This is the brand of feminism that allows for both genders to have strength. It could be slightly startling to have a decisive, effective woman, only because our culture expects women to tend toward secondary status. With a lead character named after the director herself, one can only assume this is an intentional statement about the power that women can actually bring to a situation to shake up the status quo.