Melissa Leo takes on the role of feisty Madelyn Murray O’Hair, founder of the controversial group American Atheists, in this quirky and interesting, but somewhat even biopic…
Director: Tommy O’Haver
Screenwriters: Tommy O’Haver and Irene Turner
Synopsis
*Spoilers* 1995. Madelyn Murray O’Hair, her grown son, Garth, and teenage granddaughter, Robin, sit in a motel room, their heads covered, trying to work out who has kidnapped them. When their faces are revealed, the O’Hairs recognise the lead kidnapper, David Waters.
One of Madelyn’s employees, Roy Collier, gets suspicious over her disappearance. When the police fail to act and William is seemingly disinterested in finding his mother, Roy contacts local reporter Jack Ferguson, who takes up the investigation.
The story takes us back to the 1960s, where unwed atheist mother Madelyn lives with her parents and son, William. Her parents disapprove of her ungodly lifestyle and further tensions arise when Madelyn reveals she is once again pregnant (with Garth).
Madelyn is outraged when she discovers William is forced to recite the Lord’s Prayer in school. She takes the fight all the way to the Supreme Court, where she is victorious.
Madelyn embarks on a life of anti-religion activism, culminating in the founding of the American Atheists. Her work brings her fame and fortune, but also makes her highly unpopular. She revels in her status as ‘The Most Hated Woman in America’.
Meanwhile, William grows up, gets married and has a child, Robin. However, fissions appear in his relationship with his mother and they eventually become estranged, with Robin staying with Madelyn and her loyal son Garth. William develops a drinking problem and when he sobers up, he becomes a born-again Christian.
In 1995, the kidnappers reveal their plan to extort money from the O’Hairs. It is revealed that Madelyn has been syphoning money from her non-profit organisation into offshore accounts. Waters knows this because he was hired as the office manager for American Atheists, gaining Madelyn’s trust and access to the official (and unofficial) accounts. When Madelyn fired Waters and refused his demands for a pay-off, he plotted his revenge.
However, the plan to extort the money goes wrong and one of the kidnappers tries to assault Robin, leading to all three O’Hairs being killed.
The kidnappers are eventually brought to justice when Ferguson gets Waters to confess.
To honour his mother, William refuses to pray at her grave. However, we learn that became the chair of the Religious Freedom Coalition and is working to return prayer to public schools.
Analysis
*Spoilers* There is no doubt that the story of Madelyn Murray O’Hair is an interesting one and she certainly deserves the big screen or, with Netflix as the distributor, the small screen treatment. The role of religion in public life and the contradiction of the separation of church and state remain hot-button issues, especially in the US, giving the historical story a contemporary angle.
It is also a story that contains plenty of conflict, from Madelyn’s hard-line stance on atheism that put her at odds with her own parents as well as wider society, to her relationship with William. So, all the fundamentals are in place.
Additionally, we have a solid cast, with the likes of Josh Lucas as the slimy and sinister Waters, Vincent Kartheiser as the troubled William, and Adam Scott as the intrigued reporter Ferguson. Most importantly, as the abrasive, foulmouthed Madelyn, Melissa Leo is excellent, believably portraying her subject through each of her life stages.
However, the quality of Leo’s performance proves to be both a positive and negative. This is because Madelyn is not a nice person, which is fine, except the film places so much emphasis on the kidnapping that it is important that we care about what happens to her. She is not an easy character with which to sympathise or empathise, rendering this aspect of the story a little flat.
This then leads into the main problem with the film – the awkward structure. The whole concept of juxtaposing the kidnapping with Madelyn’s rise to notoriety is fine but results in an unbalanced narrative.
There is a lot of interesting backstory truncated and glossed over to make way for scenes of the kidnappers (i.e. murderers) trying to get their loot, while the O’Hairs contemplate their fate and even develop tentative friendships with their captors.
Madelyn’s one-woman fight to ban school prayer and her strength of character in taking an unpopular stand on religion are diluted as we constantly dip in and out of her backstory. The Supreme Court fight alone is surely worthy of more than just some mocked-up newsreel footage and a kitchen table celebration?
So, we are ultimately left with the image of a cranky and unpleasant woman who alienated many of the people with whom she came into contact (including her own son) and who hid her wealth in offshore accounts.
The result is a superficial biopic that hints at an extraordinary life, which petered out in a cheap motel room and a shallow grave, betraying the legacy of a woman who may have been hated by many, but who took an important stand on an fundamental dichotomy of American life.