The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio
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Plot Summary:
Based on a true story, Evelyn Ryan uses her special talent for catchy slogans to good use as she attempts to keep her struggling family afloat. Much pithy wordplay ensues...Opinion:
Subtitled “How my mom raised 10 kids on twenty-five words or less”, “The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio” (not needing any further help being the longest movie title of the year) is about a housewife who’s ‘occupation’ is winning mail-order prizes in advertising contests by coming up with clever slogans. Evelyn Ryan’s prize-winning abilities are just a subtext for the movie, however--as with most good character dramas, the overlying framework is superfluous. The underlying heart of the story would have been the same whether her talents happened to be winning contests, selling Avon, or running an Ebay business.
Evelyn Ryan is a intelligent woman, and has a gift for writing. And yet, we can see due to the destructive influence of her husband, her writing becomes of necessity, not just a casual hobby, but (in her mind) the means by which divine providence helps her support her children when times are desperate. As it is framed, the film sounds like it will be hopelessly depressing—a sorrowful tale of a oppressed woman with a rotten husband struggling to save herself and her kids in a world where women are powerless to control their own destinies.
And yet, remarkably, the film is not depressing for the simple reason that its main character never allows herself to become depressed. “You know what your problem is,” her husband says one day, “You’re just too d--- happy!”. And, illogically, she is. Part of the movie’s strength is showing how and why she is happy, even when the family situation threatens to fall apart entirely. ("I don't need you to make me happy" she tells her husband in a quiet moment, "Just leave me alone when I am...") It's important to note that her happiness is not due to being naive or closing herself off from reality. Evelyn is well aware of the situation around her, and in a very calculating way, plots how to navigate herself and her family through it successfully. Happiness is a decision for her, and her experience has many implications for how we find happiness in our own lives (see In-Depth Analysis below).
Evelyn’s husband is a unique character. A lesser movie (say…a made-for-TV “Lifetime” movie) would have simply created an abusive, chauvinistic monster with which to torment our poor heroine. Kelly is a poor husband, to be sure, but not a monster, nor even (technically speaking) “abusive”. Rather, he is a tragic figure who genuinely cares for his family but feels compelled to drown his sadness and knowledge of his personal shortcomings in alcohol. In his heart, he wants to provide good things for his family, but suffers from an almost comical disconnect from reality--having seemingly no comprehension of the relationship between the things he chooses and the things that happen to his family because of his choices. When Evelyn confronts him about a secret mortgage he took out on their house that threatens to evict the entire family, his innocent response: “Oh, yeah…that’s due now, isn’t it?” (“I was going to pay it back secretly without anyone knowing about it” he says later, without showing any sign he ever had a specific plan in mind for how he was going to do it.)
Their relationship is a complicated one, and has more depth than the simple story structure might suggest. Also vital to the movie is Evelyn's relationship with her kids (all 10 of them!) and her hopes for their success. There is a religious undercurrent surrounding the movie--although it is admittedly not as pronounced as it could have been. As devout Catholics, Evelyn and her kids believe in God, and the power of prayer. Evelyn specifically teaches her kids about God's love and ascribes their family's success to God's hand guiding them past their assorted troubles. (While not mentioned explicitly in the movie, we surmise that it's also their Catholicism that prevents Evelyn from seriously considering a divorce).
This is a good, albeit obscure film with a positive message. It walks the line between showing an overly idealistic portrait of family life without struggles, and showing a dark, despairing view of dysfunctional families with no light at the end of the tunnel. Rather, it shows how people can and do endure through challenges--even serious ones--and be happy at the same time...
Content Analysis: (PG-13, 3-0-2-2 on the Baron's scale)
There is a fair amount of profanity in "Prize Winner...", and 100% of it comes directly from the mouth of Evelyn's husband (usually while drunk). By contrast, Evelyn says nothing worse than 'gosh'--a welcome change from most other movie characters (even 'religious' ones) who repeatedly take the name of the Lord in vain. There is some blood shown after a household accident, and a bunch of household appliances get beaten up in a drunken rage (no people, though), but nothing major. If you can get past the PG-13 level of profanity, this is a good family movie with a strong moral message.
In-depth Analysis:
What is happiness? Where does it come from? What causes a person to be happy, or unhappy? It is interesting that "The Hours"--which also stars Julianne Moore as a '50's housewife--sets itself up to be about these questions, yet never answers them. "Prize Winner" on the other hand, has a much more clear--and positive--message about happiness and what we can do to obtain it. It is interesting to note that Moore's character in "The Hours" had a loving husband and one non-delinquent child, yet is horribly depressed, attempts suicide, and eventually abandons her family. In "Prize Winner", her character has a terribly self-destructive husband, ten kids, and yet finds a way to be happy almost all the time. Perhaps the lesson is that happiness is not entirely dependant on the things that happen to us, but also how we deal with it.
Here are a few factors that seem to lead to Evelyn's happiness:
- Wisdom: Specifically, the wisdom to know what things she can control and which things she can't. She expends due effort over the first, and doesn't dwell on the second, nor allow it to bring down her mood. Early in the movie we see Kelly in a drunken rage. After their neighbors have called the police, we see that the police aren't much help in creating a better family environment--since they chat with Kelly about baseball and then pat him on the back before leaving. Likewise, the Catholic priest who advises the family doesn't have much help to provide either. You can tell that Evelyn is disappointed, but immediately recognizes that it would be counterproductive to continue to expect help from those two sources and afterwards she never depends on them again. What does she do? She does everything she can to shield her kids from Kelly's influence, and chooses her spots to exert her own influence over him--with carefully pointed comments in an effort to call attention to things that Kelly needs to change.
- Counting Your Blessings: Later in the movie, after car problems have prevented Evelyn from reaching a social appointment, her daughter asks her "Why aren't you mad?"--not about the car trouble but basically everything she has to put up with in her life. Evelyn replies, simply, that she has many blessings in life, such as having a good relationship with her daughter, and free time to do what she wants. She does not seem to pine excessively for things she does not have, nor, in fact, pine for things that she could possibly have if it weren't for her husband. She finds specific and tangible blessings that she possesses in her life and is happy for them.
- Motherhood: Evelyn states directly that all her prayers are aimed towards her children. We can see at the end of the movie after all her kids have grown and gone that the blessings of being a mother and raising her kids has provided a great source of happiness and fulfillment in her life. Would she have been happier had she avoided the opportunity to have a large family and instead worked as a professional journalist or writer (something she'd undoubtedly be very good at)? I suspect she'd find a way to be happy either way, but there's no question her greatest joy in life was through her children.
- A Conscience Free of Guilt and Sin: Never underestimate the power of a guilt-free conscience. Evelyn is happy because she does her best, all day, every day, and she knows it. (And her kids know it, too...) While there are always many worries pressing her at any given time, she is not burdened with guilt over being the cause of the family's problems. Kelly, as is obvious, lives with that guilt every day. He knows he's the cause of most of the family's struggles. He knows his kids don't like him. While he doesn't exactly try very hard to change, you cannot say that he is not aware of his shortcomings, and lives with that burden of guilt from morning until night. (This is, of course, a vicious circle--it is because of this guilt that he turns to alcohol in the first place. And the unhappier he becomes the more he drinks, which causes more financial problems for the family, which causes him to become more unhappy, and so on...)
- Faith: As a combination of elements #1 and #4, Evelyn does the best she can and does not have a problem relying on God to do the rest. She has faith that God cares about her and her family, and that if she does her part, God will come through in the end. And, (the reality of direct help from the divine aside) we can see that her faith is justified. She is able to take care of her family in the end, and by finding ways to support her husband despite his poor decisions, she allows him and her kids to become better people at the same time.
Basically, she follows the commandments of God--and it is not surprising that happiness would then follow. From Romans 8:28: "And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God..."
Random Notes & Comments:
- The movie never explains why Evelyn doesn't know how to drive, nor expresses any interest in learning... You might think at the beginning of the movie that women just aren't allowed to drive, although we see later that her daughter is taught to drive immediately upon turning 16 without anyone questioning it. Must be just a personal decision of Evelyn's...
- Add "Far From Heaven" also to the list of movies where Julianne Moore plays a '50's housewife. It is to her credit that all three characters are completely different...
