Don't listen to the bad reviews, Where the Crawdads Sing is an atmospheric, captivating film with a solid performance by Daisy Edgar-Jones.
Like the North Carolina marsh, Where the Crawdads Sing is atmospheric, captivating, and easy to get lost in. To this viewer whose copy of the book has regrettably stayed on her to-read shelf, I thoroughly enjoyed it.
This opinion is not shared among the majority of film critics. I don’t typically look at Rotten Tomatoes scores, but the reviews for director Olivia Newman's Where the Crawdads Sing demonstrate one of those rare instances where the audience and critic scores are on completely different spectrums. The audience score is an impressive 96%. The critic score is 34%. I don’t trust Rotten Tomatoes because the rating system is very definite. A critic could like some aspects of a film and not like other aspects, but Rotten Tomatoes still requires a fresh or rotten rating. It takes away any room for nuance.
I am not here to individually contest every single bad review this film received, but I am here to explain why you should give it a chance.
Daisy Edgar-Jones gives a strong performance as Kya, the “Marsh Girl” abandoned as a child by her family and abusive father, living on her own in the marsh, detached from civilization except for a caring couple that owns a store close by her house (played by Michael Hyatt and Sterling Macer Jr.). The film reveals flashbacks of Kya's life as she stands trial for the murder of a man she was once involved with. Edgar-Jones expertly balances intense grief and pain with moments of joy. She embodies all aspects of Kya, from the cautious and mistrusting to the passionate and driven.
The film’s structure — alternating between flashbacks and Kya's trial — has certainly been done before. David Strathairn plays her Atticus-Finch-type lawyer Tom Milton who chastises the courtroom and jury for mistreating the "Marsh Girl." It seems a bit cliche at times, but this structure gains new significance and purpose with the film’s ending. Without giving too much away, the ending makes viewers reflect back on the rest of the film from an entirely new perspective. The focus of this film is not on the trial but on how she came to be there.
Everyone, however, seems to agree that the film is visually stunning. With wide shots of the marsh and wildlife, audiences visually see Kya’s relationship with the landscape — not overcoming but coexisting with it. After every trial and hardship Kya experiences, the marsh comforts her. The wide shots transform a technique commonly used to convey alienation or intimidation to one that conveys familiarity and consolation. There is one scene where Kya lays in the sand, crying, and the waves calmly stroke her hair as a mother would do when comforting her child.
Amid a sea of rotten scores, I saw an excerpt from Alexandra MacAaron’s review for Women’s Voices for Change: “I found the film to be both moving and memorable. And if that makes me part of a minority, that’s fine with me.”
As much as I want to say that I have a strict criterion for what I deem a “good” film, a film really only needs to have one quality — the ability to stick with me. A good film is one I can’t stop thinking about — obsessing over – days or weeks after watching it. I experienced this with Where the Crawdads Sing, and if that makes my opinion of it the dissenting one, then so be it.
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