David Straitharn and Jane Levy in A Little Prayer
Bill (David Strathairn) seems to have gotten everything in life just right. He has a long, loving marriage with his daffy wife, Venita (Celia Weston). He runs a successful sheet metal company, where he’s training his son David (Will Pullen) to take over. David and his wife Tammy (Jane Levy) live in a guest house in Bill’s backyard, and there’s talk of the couple having a baby. And Bill’s daughter Patti (Anna Camp) lives a few states away with her husband and Bill’s first grandchild, Hadley (Billie Roy). But suddenly Bill’s smooth sail into retirement starts to hit choppy waters. Patti leaves her husband and shows up on Bill and Venita’s doorstep with no money, needing a place to stay. And Bill begins to question David’s commitment, both to the company and to his marriage, as he starts to suspect David is more than flirting with the company’s receptionist, Narcedalia (Dascha Polanco).
The disparate personalities of Bill’s family are the source of a bit of relatable comedy and a whole lot more drama in A Little Prayer. Bill is the classic strong, stone-faced patriarch, a Vietnam veteran with small-c-conservative values. But his kids couldn’t be more different. Where he’s quiet, reflective, and organized, his daughter Patti is loud, brash, and a hot mess. Where he’s dedicated to his work and family, his son David takes neither seriously. David, like his father, is also a veteran, but whereas Dad has internalized and pushed down his feelings about his service, David is less able to cope and is careening towards a drinking problem. The person who Bill feels the closest connection to is his daughter-in-law, Tammy, and he struggles with how to both support his son and to protect his daughter-in-law from the devastating situation his son is creating. But mostly, Bill has the most horrible realization a father can have: that now that his kids are grown and he’s decades too late to do anything about it, maybe, just maybe, he was kind of a shitty father.
There’s a dangerously thin line between drama and melodrama when it comes to a domestic drama like this one, but writer/director Angus McLachlan stays on the right side of the line. There’s a plot filled with dramatic peaks, but he keeps it grounded in the character’s reactions rather than the plot’s machinations. He does an excellent job of showing and not telling, of letting characters’ reactions to things make clear how they’re feeling rather than having them state it in the dialogue. The first scenes illustrate this wonderfully: we open on Tammy and David in bed. Tammy is in her pajamas, under the covers, it’s the crack of dawn, and she’s already awake. David is still in his work clothes, laying on top of the covers (and Tammy), and pretty much dead to the world. Tammy gets up and heads to the main house to make breakfast while a woman’s voice is belting out opera so loud that it carries throughout the neighborhood. Tammy and Bill both find this whimsical; everyone else just finds it annoying. The connection between Tammy and Bill and the disconnection between Tammy and David, defined subtly yet clearly, all in a matter of minutes.
The drama of David and Tammy’s rocky marriage that serves as the film’s narrative throughline is engrossing enough, but it’s as an acting showcase that A Little Prayer’s really shines, particularly for Strathairn and Levy. Strathairn (Oscar-nominated for Good Night and Good Luck) captures Bill’s shifts from paternalistic to caring to befuddled to frustrated to exasperated to defeated—he’s a man convinced that life isn’t supposed to be how it is now but isn’t sure how it got here or how to fix it, even though he desperately wants to. And Levy (Suburgatory, Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist) is heartbreaking as a woman who fought hard for a little domestic bliss that she’s slowly watching run away through her fingers. Pullen (Dickenson) as David doesn’t quite connect as deeply: part of it may be that the script purposefully keeps David at a remove so that he remains as inscrutable to us as he is to Bill, but he mostly comes off as an unrepentant asshole for much of the movie’s runtime. Polanco (Orange is the New Black) as Narcedalia starts out a little one note due to her limited role in the script, but she gets a showcase moment against Strathairn that really opens up the character. Weston and Camp are both mostly around to offer some much-needed levity, Weston (Dead Man Walking) with Venita’s complete lack of filter and Camp (True Blood, Pitch Perfect) with Patti’s white trash-ness. (Patti rolls into town with her daughter, some clothes tossed in laundry baskets…and a metal detector she uses constantly, searching for…treasure?…on her own parents’ property.)
Since A Little Prayer is the kind of movie built to let actors show off their skills, it’s probably not surprising that pretty much every one of them gets their chance to cry onscreen. What’s impressive, though, is that they all stick the landing, and it all actually feels earned. A Little Prayer succeeds because MacLachlan gets the little details right to make the characters feel real, and the actors are able to convey the interiority that’s not made explicit in the script to complete the picture. It helps that a lot of the most emotional moments are captured with long single shots—I don’t know whether to credit MacLachlan, cinematographer Scott Miller, or editor Tricia Holmes, but there’s a shot late in the film where Tammy is having her most emotional moment while seated next to Bill, and yet the handheld camera shot stays locked in close and tight on Levy for an almost uncomfortably long time (even while Strathairn is talking), a choice that really makes her upset palpable.
Director McLachlan started his career in film by penning the screenplay for 2005’s Junebug, the film that earned Amy Adams an Oscar nom for Best Supporting Actress. This, his third feature as writer/director, premiered to hugely positive buzz at Sundance way back in 2023 but took a circuitous route to finally arriving in theaters for a limited run earlier this summer before now being released to stream. Fans of domestic dramas and seeing skilled actors work at the height of their game would do well to check it out. | Jason Green
A Little Prayer is available to rent/purchase on Apple TV, Prime Video, Google Play, Fandango at Home, and more starting October 7.
