Navigating between faith and skepticism

Movie Review

Higher Ground

This movie has been designated a Critics' Pick by the film reviewers of The New York Times.



By A. O. SCOTT


There is something remarkable — you might even say miraculous — about the way “Higher Ground” makes its gentle, thoughtful way across the burned-over terrain of the American culture wars. The film, directed with disarming grace and sharp intelligence by Vera Farmiga (who also stars in it), is about the conflict between skepticism and religious faith, but it does not treat that battle as an either/or, winner-take-all proposition. Movies about belief and believers frequently succumb to woozy piety or brittle contempt, but “Higher Ground” belongs, along with Robert Duvall’s “Apostle” and Michael Tolkin’s underappreciated “Rapture,” among the elect. Focused with sympathetic intensity on the ordeal of a single soul, it illuminates, as though from within, a complex spiritual struggle.

Based on a 2002 memoir by Carolyn S. Briggs — originally called “This Dark World” — “Higher Ground” tells the story of Corinne Walker, played as a child by McKenzie Turner, as a teenager by Ms. Farmiga’s sister Taissa and in adulthood by the director herself. The young Corinne belongs to what appears to be a main-line Protestant congregation, where the pastor (Bill Irwin) urges the children to invite Jesus, whom he describes as a polite neighbor, into their homes.
But it is only later, when she joins a tightly knit, ecstatic band of worshipers, that Christianity becomes a significant force in Corinne’s life. A bookish, freethinking adolescent, >she falls in love with Ethan (Boyd Holbrook, later Joshua Leonard), who plays guitar and has a troubled, sensitive face that is almost a mirror of her own. She becomes pregnant, they marry young, and a near-catastrophe nudges them from the life of feckless young rock ’n’ rollers and literary dreamers onto the path of salvation.
“Higher Ground” flashes back to Corinne’s earlier life from an opening scene of her baptism, in a sun-dappled pond surrounded by rustling trees and happy faces. Though her subsequent experiences will be marked by growing ambivalence, the joy of that moment is never entirely dispelled. Corinne is smart and capable, and while her childhood was shadowed by the unhappy marriage of her parents (John Hawkes and Donna Murphy), she is hardly a desperate pilgrim clinging to easy consolation.
Nor is her church, in spite of some cultlike aspects, depicted as an outpost of repression and hypocrisy. Especially when Corinne is with her friend Annika (the amazing, earthy Dagmara Dominczyk) — who speaks in tongues to God and with easy candor about sex — she feels loved and listened to. The patriarchal ways of the pastor (Norbert Leo Butz) and his wife (Barbara Tuttle) grate on Corinne, in part because they stifle the intellectual curiosity that feeds her faith.
But the secular world has its own compromises and blind spots. Corinne’s gradual move away from her circle of believers (and Ethan) is not presented as an unequivocal liberation. What faith and doubt have in common is that both are hard work, and the hard-won wisdom of “Higher Ground” is that human nature does not necessarily distinguish between saints and sinners.
I don’t mean to make it sound as if the movie, which was written by Ms. Briggs and Tim Metcalfe, were preaching or making an argument. Nor does it aim for a soft middle ground of nervous tolerance. Instead, it presents the subjective facts of Corinne’s life as precisely and clearly as it can, refusing to condescend or sentimentalize anyone, and inviting you to sift through the nuances and find the answers for yourself.
As you might expect, given her professional background — a breakthrough performance in “Down to the Bone,” and she nearly stole “Up in the Air” from George Clooney — Ms. Farmiga lavishes solicitous attention on her actors, virtually none of whom strike a false note. The story has one or two (like a visit from Corinne’s feckless sister, played by Nina Arianda), and there are a few fantasy sequences that feel jarring and superfluous.
Ms. Farmiga’s greatest asset as a director may be her own face, a remarkably subtle and expressive instrument. Corinne is a woman of complex temperament and shifting moods, at some times searching for a simpler self, at others impatient to give voice to the full range of her thoughts and feelings. And all of the gradations of happiness, worry, fatigue, anger and mischief that she undergoes — in other words, the full range of her individuality — are at play in Ms. Farmiga’s features.
“Higher Ground” ends on a daring note of irresolution. Earlier, Pastor Bill has made reference to Revelation 3:16 — “because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I shall spew you from my mouth” — a verse that seems unequivocal in its condemnation of uncertainty. And the expectations of the audience may mirror this impatience. But there is nothing tepid about Corinne’s confusion, and there is also evident passion in Ms. Farmiga’s embrace of it.
“Higher Ground” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). No one is without sin.
HIGHER GROUND
Opens on Friday (August 26) in New York and Los Angeles.


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