“No risk, no reward” sounds like a title that Flannery O’Connor might give a short story, in the manner of “A Good Man is Hard to Find” or “The Life You Save Might Be Your Own.” In Wildcat, a new biopic about O’Connor, we see her live out this maxim, taking a perilous leap of faith. In portraying her gamble with honesty and discipline, the film succeeds where other recent films involving Catholicism have failed.
On the one hand, Wildcat, directed by Ethan Hawke and starring his daughter Maya, showcases the rewards of faith as manifested in O’Connor’s work. Known for her uncompromising Catholicism from behind enemy lines, whether among Georgia evangelicals or New York bohemians, the Southern writer retained a rich, almost mystical prayer life, documented in a journal published in 2013.
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