Movie Spoiler DOLORES CLAIBORNE (1995) starring Kathy Bates - after review

Dolores Claiborne: Movie Spoiler Summary (after capsule review).  Thanks to the success of Kathy Bates' Best Actress Oscar-winning turn in Misery, Castle Rock produced and Columbia distributed Dolores Claiborne, also based on a best-selling Stephen King novel.  Bates goes from loony tunes Annie to a much more grounded salt-of-the-earth Dolores, who is accused of murder.  The charges draw her big-city estranged daughter Selena (Jennifer Jason Leigh) back to her small-town Maine roots to stop an vendetta-driven detective (Christopher Plummer), while she reconciles past resentments with the truth.  There are a few jolts and the lines are both melodramatic, yet memorable.  There are many moments that you want to clock the Maine truisms right out of Bates so she starts making sense, but Bates' performance is lovely, that she makes it hard not to enjoy the earnestness of her plight while simultaneously savoring the richly over-the-top one liners.  Leigh squeezes her words out through her teeth, but her solemn, dour New Yorker is quite nuanced.  Plummer is solid as usual and you can also catch early glimpses of David Strathairn and John C. Reilly.  And, Judy Parfitt, well the aplomb with which she bestows her Vera will knock you down coming and going (or make you roll your eyes).  While the film did decent numbers at the box-office as a spring release, considering how well this has stood up and its (silent) fan-base, this film should have been a lot bigger.  Perhaps audiences were expecting Misery 2 and got disappointed.  If you can accept its pulpish nature, it's highly acceptable entertainment.  This is one film which has gradually moved up my "best of" list for the year it came out.

Movie Spoiler Summary

Dolores Claiborneopens with shots of the Maine coast.  The camera quickly makes its way into the home of Vera Donavon (Judy Parfitt in a cruelly unrecognized bravura performance).  From downstairs, we watch her shadow struggle with Dolores (Kathy Bates) on the second floor.  When Vera takes a fall and Dolores rushes into the kitchen to find a rolling pin to finish her off, it’s staged to look like she had murdered her employer.  The mailman Sammy Marchant (Wayne Robson) walks in on Dolores as she lords over Vera’s injured body with the incriminating weapon above her head.

In Manhattan, while Selena St. George (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and her editor Peter (the very hot Eric Bogosian) discuss an article of hers, she receives a fax about her mother Dolores being arrested.  She returns to Maine and first visits Detective John Mackey (Christopher Plummer).   Constable Frank Stamshaw (the perfectly cast John C. Reilly in an early role) alerts Dolores of the presence of her daughter.  They release her on her own recognizance.  Leaving the station, some kids taunt her, “Hey Ms. Claiborne, Kill anyone else today?”  She quickly cuts them down to size: “Not just yet.  When I change my mind, I know exactly where to start.”  She saves some of her witty tongue for the detective, “Sorry are, ya?  I bet the last time you were sorry is when you needed to use the pay toilet and the string on your pet dime broke.”

Selena drives Dolores back to her home.  They haven’t seen each other since she left years ago and she’s very distant towards her mother.  Dolores: “I just can’t believe you’re her.”  Selena: “That makes two of us … I’m sure there’s a very good reason why you go out of your way to antagonize them [the kids] like that.”  Dolores delivers the film’s key line: “Sometimes being a bitch is all a woman has left to hold onto.”  When she comments on Selena’s car, she impresses upon her mother that her presence is temporary: “It’s a rental,” she says the last word in a singsong voice.  Dolores admits she didn’t kill Vera.  “I did not murder that bitch anymore than I’m wearing a diamond tiara.”  They arrive at her house, which has been vandalized.  “Look at this mess: cheese and crackers.”  (A line that could have come out of Bates’ Annie from Misery.  Dolores has a flashback to when the search crew looked for her husband’s body years ago.  “Selena, I said get in the house.”  Back to present tense: “I am in the house.”  Selena looks around.  There’s no working phone to Selena’s dismay.  While she steps out, Dolores sifts through her things and makes note of the many prescription medications her daughter takes.  She has a flashback to playing hide-and-seek with her daughter (played impeccably by Ellen Muth, who is a dead-ringer for a younger Leigh). 

Back to present day, Dolores talks to her daughter about how proud she and the rest of the town is of her career achievements while she tries to concentrate on writing.  “Hell, even Ms. Vera Kiss-my-back-cheeks-Donovan couldn’t help but be impressed.  The look on her face, the day you wrote that first picture on the cover story, you would have thought she passed a brick.”  Dolores makes note of her daughter’s drinking.  “Maybe you’d better slow down.”  Selena: “Believe me, I know my limit.”  Dolores: “Yeah, don’t that sound familiar.”  The subject of Selena’s alcoholic father comes up, as well as Dolores killing him.  “Let’s not pretend we’re in some God-damned Norman Rockwell family reunion here,” Selena pleads. 

Dolores has a flashback where we learn that Joe (David Strathairn, whose career was beginning to take flight) is very fond of his daughter juxtaposed to the detest he feels towards his wife.  She brings up Theo, who wants to buy some parts from Joe and mentions that part of his AA program is helping out friends.  She starts busting up laughing when she sees his pants split down the ass crack.  The subject of money comes back up.  Joe starts to joke around with the split in his pants and then abruptly attacks her with a large iron pan.  Later, absorbing the blow while sitting down, she watches her doting daughter work on her homework with her father.  Joe, not one to follow AA protocol, slips some whiskey into his can of Coke. 

Later, Dolores, who has trouble moving, accidentally breaks a dish.  In an unexpected and thrilling moment, out of nowhere, she smashes a huge dish full of liquid on the side of her husband’s head and draws an axe.  Throwing the weapon right into his lap before he can react, she demands, “Go on, all I ask is that you do it quick.  And don’t let Selena see the mess once it’s over.  You wan to run me down?  You go right ahead.  You can be as mean and hurtful as you want.  But, this is the last time you will ever hit me.  You do it again, one of us is going to the bone yard.”  Without laying a finger on her, he asks her to help clean up the mess. 

Back to present, we learn that Dolores just shared that story with Selena.  Outside, Selena tells her mother that she needs to lawyer up.  Dolores, not too concerned, responds: “It’s cold as Christmas … you’ll catch a death out here.”  Selena observes the worn skin of her mother prompting her to respond, “I guess if you want to know somebody’s life, you look at their hands.”  Dolores has a flashback to the first time she met Vera, who quickly establishes that she is a card-carrying cunt.  She sends Susan (Susan Lane) crying from a job interview: “Look at the bright side dear.  You may have not gotten a job, but think what fun you’ll have telling your friends what a bitch Vera Donovan is.  Next.”  Dolores enters.  “I do not pretend to be an easy woman to work for …  [looking at her journal] Dolores.  This house has a number of rules.  [Scoffing] I’m sure you’ve heard them secondhand.  But, I’ll tell you in person, so we can avoid a teary scene later on.  I like all the windows open every day for at least two hours …”  Vera’s voice drifts away, as Dolores’ narration takes over, “She did have her ways, did she ever.  I don’t know where she got her ideas, but I did know she was a prisoner of them.” 

Back to Vera’s monologue: “The silver has to be checked and of course cleaned every week.  It may look clean to you, but I like to see my face in it …”  Again, we shift to Dolores’ commentary, “The tubs had to be scrubbed out every day with vinegar and baking soda.  Table clothes, napkins, handkerchiefs, everything had to be hand-washed, ironed and starched.  Mildew was grounds for firing.  The sheets now, that’s one thing you didn’t ever want to get wrong.  You could cut off her high-flown snobbish nose and she still would have been able to smell a sheet that had been hung outside from one that had been baked in the dryer.”

We get a brief taste of Vera’s marriage to her husband (Kelly Burnett).  She emerges outside on the veranda while he plays golf.  “Isn’t this glorious, Jack?”  He ignores her and she retreats to being the tyrannical, meddling employer, while her attendant hangs laundry.  “Six pins, Dolores.  You know that’s the way I like it.  Six pins, not five.”  She takes a sip of her drink and tries again with her husband.  “Jack, it’s 4:30 PM.  Don’t you want a cocktail?”  He ignores her.  Dolores concludes this chapter with, “Three square meals of bitchery all Summer long.”

During the Winter, Vera offers Dolores pay to dust the house during her absence down south.  Jack dies.  When Vera arrives back in Maine, she immediately resumes her role as harpy.  “Dolores, I believe I’ve told you more than once, I want the welcome matts with letters facing out and not in … [To the movers] Get that out of here and put that here.  And take away this [shuddering] disgusting sofa.”  Dolores continues her narration, “Took two days to load in her majesty’s palace.  Of course, she offered me full time and I took it.  I took it.  I knew what kind of Hell it would be.  Hell ain’t something you get thrown into overnight.  Nope, real Hell comes on ya’ slow and steady, as a line of wet, Winter sheets.  Snot leaking off your nose.  Your hands so cold and raw, you start wishing they’d go numb.  It’s only December, you know by February, that skin is going to be cracked so bad, it’ll break open and bleed if you clench your fists.  But you got on to the next and the next.  Before you know it, those streets stretch out over twenty years.”  Dolores shares she saved the money she earned from Vera for Selena’s education.  

Detective Mackey and his constable show up for a hair sample.  “A little morning walk?”  Dolores: “Nope, just packing up the speedboat, so I’s can make my big escape … Bring your scissors, did ya? … You want it, you cut it.”  Detective Mackey: “Actually, I need to pull it.  We need the root.”  “Go on, take what you want.  I ain’t doin’ any beauty pageants this week.”  He shares that Sheila said Dolores threatened to kill Vera on more than one occasion.  “You go ahead, Mr. Mackey.  You scribble that down on your pad there.  You make a note on that.  As long as you write down that saying anything and doin’ it are two separate things.”  She sneers, “But, then, your wife probably already told you that.”  Detective Mackey: “My wife, Ms. Claiborne, died twelve years ago of bone cancer ... " zinging her with, "natural causes.”  Stamshaw tries to separate the two in only an earnest manner that Reilly can achieve: “Okay, I guess we’ll press on here.”

Selena: “What the Hell did I just see?  … That is the last guy in the world you want to make an enemy out of."  “I ain’t making one, I’m keepin’ one.”  Almost as the film’s acknowledgement of the script’s often (quite acceptable) gimmicky dialogue, Selena responds, “Oh, what is that supposed to mean?”  There’s a flashback to Det. Mackey questioning Selena about her father’s murder.  She worked for Vera the weekend of the eclipse.  Dolores puts the detective in his place, “Oh, Hell, forget the 'Missus.'  Anybody who’s gonna’ accuse me of killing my husband, go right ahead and call me Dolores.”  Frantic, because she’s unable to console her emotionally distraught daughter, she comments on the detective’s performance, “Well, if trying to turn an accident into a murder and make a young girl who just lost her father cry her eyes out every night, if that’s just doing his job, then you better put him down for overtime.”

Upon returning to her present day dilapidated home, Dolores decides to break the window.  “No sir and no ma’am.  Son of bitch has been waiting a long time to pick over my bones.  Hand me that axe.  Just look at this window.  Little piss squirts.  I oughtta call their parents and have them come over and pay for it.  Now, I got to go buy glass and putty and God knows what else.  Could have burned down the whole god-damn house.”  Dolores slams the axe against the window sending shards of glass crashing everywhere.  Selena talks to Peter over the phone about a story he has reassigned to Selena’s colleague Maureen.  At a tavern, John approaches her and she asks him, “Shouldn’t you be off somewhere analyzing my mother’s hair?”  He shares that her father’s death is his only unsolved case.  She figures out that he was the one that sent the fax.  He warns her about her mother, “Vera Donovan’s on my head.  The next one’s on yours.” 

At home, Dolores cooks for Selena.  “You telling me there’s nobody?”  In one of Leigh’s best line deliveries, she responds, “I’m telling you there’s a lot of nobody’s.”  Some “friggin’ yahoo,” “little bastards” drive by firing a rifle, throwing a bottle, taunting her, “They’re going to put you in the chair, Dolores.”  Selena takes some pills: “Look at me, do you see how I am right now?”  Dolores: “Honey, what good is that gonna do?”  Selena: “Because in ten minutes, I’m going to be fine.  JUST GIVE ME TEN MINUTES.”  The phone rings and takes us back to another memory of Selena taking a call from kids teasing her.  Dolores takes the line, “You know I find out who this is and I’ll hang your privates from [battiscan light].”  In a harrowing moment, Selena deliberately breaks an ornament and cuts herself.  Cut to present, where Selena talks about the nervous breakdown she had after her father’s death.  She jumps in the car and leaves.  There is another brief flashback to the search for Joe’s body, before we cut back to present and Selena maroons the car while trying to flee her mother.

At Vera’s house collecting her personal items, Dolores fixes Vera’s welcome matt before walking in.  The detective is taking samples.  Upstairs, she sees that most of her possessions are bagged and tagged.  Selena finds pictures and documents framed in a collage showing how proud Dolores was of her daughter.  Dolores grabs a scrapbook of Selena’s articles downstairs, but the detective pulls it away from her.  Thumbing through, he comments, “Jean Harris: almost got away with it, didn’t she.”  There’s another more recent flashback to Dolores taking care of the dying Vera, before we cut back to present and Dolores makes a scene about the scrapbook.  On her way out, she offers him some parting words, “Now you listen to me Mr. Grand-high Poobah, up a butt-crack.  I’m just about half-past give-a-shit with your fun and games.”  Joe reveals that Vera left Dolores everything and therein lies motive.  Selena goes chasing after a confused Dolores. 

No this isn't Annie hobbling Paul

In another recent flashback to Vera, she summons Dolores with a bell.  “I’m wet.”  Dolores: “What else is new?”  Vera asks for her China peg and fights with her while she tries to change the sheets. “Vera, God damn it, you gonna sit here and marinate in it? … Your days of silk and satin are over, Vera.  From now on, it’s wash and wear.”  When Vera suggests that Dolores has it in for her, she replies, “When I get ready to settle you harsh, I won’t bother with poison, I’ll just shove you out the window.  They’ll be one less smelly bitch in the world.”  Laughing, Vera responds, “Well, don’t we have a hair across our ass today, Dolores Claiborne.  I want my China pig.”  Dolores calms the sobbing Vera with a wind-up rotating musical porcelain pig sitting on a pillow.  While Dolores makes tea in the kitchen, she hears a crash and investigates.  Vera wheels herself towards the steps.  She strikes and bites Dolores, before throwing herself down the steps, crashing into the banister at the foot, as we witnessed at the beginning of the movie.  The personal caregiver tries to soothe the injured Vera, who has lost none of her personal bite.  “Dolores Claiborne says I’m going to fine.  I’m relieved to have a professional opinion.”  She pleads with Dolores to put her out of her misery and finish her off. 

Selena starts looking for a lawyer.  “Do you think I give a fiddler’s fuck what anybody else says about me?” Dolores responds.  The subject of Joe arises.  There’s a flashback to a dinner table discussion of Selena’s slipping grades.  Later, Dolores and Selena take the ferry home from Selena’s part-time job at the Devereux Hotel.  Dolores tries to reach out to her daughter, but it turns into a confrontation.  She discovers her mother-in-law’s cameo hanging across Selena’s neck, prompting her to suspect the worst.  At home, she opens her checkbook and then heads to the bank.  Banker Allard Pease (Bob Gunton, who you may recognize as Warden Norton from The Shawshank Redemption) informs her that Joe had withdrawn all of the money from the custodial account she had saved up working for Vera.  She’s in disbelief at his uselessness and the unfairness of the world.  “You say ‘you’re sorry’ one more time and I’ll kick your butt up so high, you’ll look like hunchback.”

While working during the upcoming eclipse, Vera notices Dolores looking trod upon.  She starts crying before she speaks, “Vera …”  Her employer quickly sets the tone of their conversation and invites Dolores to see her as an equal for once, “I insist that all women who have hysterics in my drawing room call me by my Christian name.”  She shares the story about Joe taking her money, while Vera works needlepoint.  “Well, don’t look to me Dolores; all my money is tied up in cash.”   She reveals she was going to take Selena and leave.  There’s another flashback to the ferry scene and Selena slaps her mother.  Back to present, they argue, as Selena doubts the validity of the account.  In a flashback, Selena leaves the house for the Devereux Hotel for the preparation of the big eclipse.  While chasing after Selena, Dolores accidentally falls slightly into a hole, injuring herself.  She realizes its incredible depth and precarious placement and has an idea. 

Back to present day, Selena wakes up.  As she leaves, she finds the detective’s report on their doorstep.  Dolores doesn’t want her to leave, but Selena throws her words back in her face, “I’m sorry, mother, sometimes being a bitch is the only thing a woman has to hold onto.”  During her drive, she finds a tape left by her mother.  “Japanese make the cunningness little gadgets.”  There’s a flashback to Dolores making the tape as well as one of Dolores confessing to Vera about Selena’s molestation.  In perhaps Vera’s most deliciously over-the-top monologue, Parfitt offers every last bit of gravitas in her: “It’s a depressingly masculine world we live in Dolores … Husbands die every day, Dolores.  Why, one is probably dying right now while you’re sitting here, weeping.  They die and leave their wives their money.  I should know, shouldn’t I?  Sometimes they’re driving home from their mistresses’ apartment and their brakes suddenly fail.  An accident Dolores, can be an unhappy woman’s best friend.”  Dolores drives home considering Vera’s campy words.

On the day of the eclipse, musicians play a bossa nova at Vera's party.  She sends Dolores home with eclipse viewers and boxes for both her and Joe.  Vera provides the origins of the story’s most famous line, “Sometimes Dolores, sometimes you have to be a high riding bitch to survive.  Sometimes, being a bitch is all a woman has to hang onto … Now, go on home.  Pam and Sheila can clean up.  Remember: eclipse at five.”  Dolores arrives home while Joe is tooling around sounding and looking like the lewd truck-driver from Thelma & Louise (I swear Strathairn modeled his performance after him.)  She offers him some Black & White scotch whiskey, which he is more than happy to pour down his throat.  She prepares a plate of snacks, his last supper if you will.  “Why don’t you eat up, Joe, before the flies beat you to it.”  She washes the dishes.  The eclipse begins.  “I’ve got another surprise for you Joe.”  “Oh yeah?  What?  Somebody invented the pill to cure ugly.”  She brings up the custodial account money.  He starts laughing and she informs him that she got most of the money back in cash.  “So you can just go fuck yourself; that is, if you can get that limp old noodle of yours to stand up.”  He tries to strangle her, but throws her to the ground on her back.  She tells him that she buried the money in the yard and he demands she tell him.  “You better save the big talk for your pals at the barber shop.  I wonder if they’ll think you’re such a stud, when they find out the only ass you can get your hands on belongs to your thirteen-year-old daughter.”  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”  “Really?  Then how come you look like the devil just reached in and grabbed them little raisins you call balls?” the last word she says as she slams her arms on his chest.  According to her plan, Joe chases after her.  She runs past the hole, where he unsuspectingly falls to his death mid-pursuit.  Dolores looks up to the sky as the eclipse takes full effect.  In an iconic shot, she pretends to go looking for her husband.  On the ferry, Selena has her own flashback to Joe giving her the cameo and sexually abusing her.  In present tense, there’s a scene that looks straight out of a Japanese horror film involving Selena seeing the back of her head staring back at her instead of her own reflection in the mirror. 

The detective and magistrate (Roy Cooper) take Dolores’ deposition.  Selena shows up.  Detective throws out a line delivery that is, shall we say, Hannibal Lector-esque (whether intentional or not, it works).  They talk about the relationship between Dolores and Vera and her eight-year-old will.  Selena puts on a defense and gets into it with Det. Mackey, which leads to the one case he hasn’t solved: Joe’s death.  Selena puts on an impassioned plea on the behalf of her mother and then threatens to sick an expensive Manhattan attorney on John’s ass.  Dolores and Selena say their goodbyes, before she sends her daughter off on the ferry to take her back to Manhattan.  Roll credits.