Where the Crawdads Sing – Review

Where the Crawdads Sing – Review
125 Minutes, PG-13
Written by Lucy Alibar (based on the novel by Delia Owens)
Directed by Olivia Newman

**You can read Ryan’s review HERE, and I’ve dropped our audio discussion of the film below.**

Synopsis:

From the best-selling novel comes a captivating mystery. Where the Crawdads Sing tells the story of Kya, an abandoned girl who raised herself to adulthood in the dangerous marshlands of North Carolina. For years, rumors of the “Marsh Girl” haunted Barkley Cove, isolating the sharp and resilient Kya from her community. Drawn to two young men from town, Kya opens herself to a new and startling world; but when one of them is found dead, she is immediately cast by the community as the main suspect. As the case unfolds, the verdict as to what actually happened becomes increasingly unclear, threatening to reveal the many secrets that lay within the marsh.

Let’s dispense with the obvious right up front, shall we?

I am not the target demographic for this film. Or the book it was based on.

But that’s neither here nor there, as I never read the book, although I am led to believe that producer Reese Witherspoon wanted this adaptation to hew as closely as possible to the source material.

Now let’s move on to our star, Daisy Edgar-Jones, whose year it most certainly is, with her turns in the divisive Fresh (from Hulu), a fantastic turn on Under the Banner of Heaven (FX), and now the lead in Where the Crawdads Sing.

What a wonderful talent she is shaping up to be. Here, as a young woman in 1969, who has been abandoned by everyone throughout her life, beginning with her mother, then her older siblings as they fled their abusive and drunken father, leaving only Kya to survive.

When even her father leaves and doesn’t return, Kya learns to survive in the marsh they call home, digging mussels to sell, while exploring and documenting (through art) the flora and fauna of her environment.

As she grows, her isolation keeps her from attending school, though she experiences love, but cannot trust men due to her experience with her father. she learns to read and write from Tate, a boy her brother used to fish with when they were younger, but he leaves for college and never returns, breaking a promise, and with it, her heart.

Keeping to herself, Kya meets another boy, Chase, a rich kid and local sports hero, who convinces her of his love, and she slowly opens herself to his advances. He keeps their relationship a secret, while still professing they will marry.

The film opens with a dead body (Chase) and a hunt for a cause. The authorities finally settle on murder, and fear and gossip lead them to the Marsh Girl, who rumor had it was a “loose woman” who had seduced Chase and killed him when she learned he was engaged to a “proper woman.”

Make no mistake, however, the real love story here isn’t between Kya and Tate or Kya and Chase, it’s between Kya and the Marsh, which, as shot, is a natural wonder to behold, taking even Kya’s breath away when she sees it not from the water level, but from the height of a watchtower for the first time.

Told through Kya’s voiceover and flashbacks to her childhood as she undergoes a trial for Chase’s murder, Where the Crawdads Sing is akin to Fried Green Tomatoes in many ways, but lacks the narrative motion of that film.

A slow-building study of life not only in a small community, but one in the fifties and sixties, Where the Crawdads Sing features fine performances all-around, including David Strathairn as Kya’s lawyer (who I always enjoy watching), with maybe my favorite performance of his since Passion Fish.

But it’s Edgar-Jones who has to carry the show, and she does, despite being saddled with the aforementioned narration, which often feels at odds with the rest of the film. Is she talking to her lawyer? Her journals? It’s just a strange bit of construction that can kind of jar the viewer out of the flow of the story a bit.

I’m sure we’ll be hearing more from Edgar-Jones moving forward, as we should, and the film will likely wind up in a few awards categories over the coming months.

That debate will be interesting to watch develop.

Where the Crawdads Sing opens exclusively in theaters on July 15 and stars Daisy Edgar-Jones, Taylor John Smith, Harris Dickinson, Michael Hyatt, Sterling Macer Jr., and David Strathairn.

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