by
James Rose
Even though it is the second part of a projected horror film trilogy, Ti West’s Pearl (2022), is more a sharply written and extremely well performed character study of the titular character than it is a genre film. Set in 1918, at the height of World War One and the Spanish Flu epidemic, the film chronicles the slow but steady emergence of psychopath Pearl (Mia Goth). Living with her German immigrant parents on an isolated farmstead in rural Texas, Pearl dreams of becoming a famous Hollywood Chorus Girl, a fantasy which will enable her to escape her strict, dominating mother, Ruth (Tandi Wright), and her responsibilities in both looking after her paralysed father (Matthew Sutherland) and managing the farm. Her sense of entrapment is compounded by her marriage to Howard (Alistair Sewell) who, despite coming from a wealthy family, desires nothing more than the honest life and work of a farmhand.
As tensions increase between mother and daughter, Pearl’s violent nature begins to emerge in the form of a wish that Howard, who is away fighting on the Front Line, has been killed, as well as a desire to murder both of her parents in order to free her from the farm. These desires find an initial outlet in the killing of animals but as more and more events and people stand in the way of her dream, Pearl embarks upon a veritable killing spree. Herein, then, lies the horror of Pearl. Occurring in the last quarter of the film, it consists of a series of four murders: one is accidental, one premeditated, and the other two acts of defiant revenge. While the film offers a range of images, narrative events, character actions and dialogue that is rich with subtext, it is perhaps the film’s closing image that warrants focused critical analysis: a seemingly nondescript static medium close-up of Pearl.
Moments before this final shot, Pearl has welcomed Howard back into their family farmhouse after his unexpected return from the battlefields. Holding a glass pitcher which appears to be filled with stagnant water close to her chest, she says, with seemingly genuine heart, “I am so glad you’re home,” while he stares in utter horror at the scene that surrounds him: the dining table has been set and laid with bowls of soup, mould blossoming across the surface of the deep orange broth; a rotting pig rest upon a platter as the centerpiece to the meal, the flesh peeling away as maggots continue to bury themselves within the decay; the corpses of Ruth and her husband, both murdered by their daughter, have been sat in their usual seats, posed as if about to eat, knives and forks in their stiffened hands, eyes glazed white, skin shrunken to their skulls, flies hovering about their lips. Howard looks back to Pearl and she breaks out into a broad and oblivious smile, her lips a bright glossy red, her revealed teeth perfect and white. The soundtrack swells to compound her romantic gesture as the text The End, in elegant script, wipes across the screen. But the film doesn’t end; instead the shot of Pearl is held and, as the End Credits appear over her image, she continues to hold her smile in real time, smiling and smiling and she keeps on smiling for she is so happy that Howard is back home, safe and where he belongs.
Pearl holds this smile for approximately a minute and a half before an iris-out consumes the screen in darkness. It is a moment in which Goth’s performance is both acting and an act of endurance, an act of trying to keep still, of trying to maintain that happy smile. She tries to remain steady, tries to remain an image of the loving wife in the happy household, but Goth struggles and her head begins to move, the tendons in her neck strain; she repeatedly blinks as tears form and her nose begins to run. A single tear slips from her left eye, then another from her right, running down her cheeks to what is now a pained and rictus smile. It is a powerful performance, with Goth desperately holding on to whatever shred of sanity Pearl has left whilst, as the seconds literally pass, also conveying the tragedy of what Pearl is and what she has become because, in truth, it is not and never was a happy smile.
Before Howard’s return to the farm, Pearl attends an audition for a small part in a touring dancing troupe but is unsuccessful, her dream of becoming a Chorus Girl now even more a fantasy than an attainable dream. Returning to the farm, Pearl is comforted by her sister-in-law, Mitsy (Emma Jenkins-Purro), who encourages Pearl to verbally express her feelings. This results in a harrowing confession to a litany of cruel and violent behaviour: Pearl tells Mitsy how she wanted Howard – Mitsy’s brother – to die in the war, describes the loss of their unborn child as a relief and that she “loathed the feeling of it growing inside” of her, tells of how a stranger sexually satisfied her more than Howard did, before going on to explain that she killed small animals first, building up to her mother, father, and then the local cinema projectionist before suggesting she has “made such a mess of things.” But, she assures Mitsy, she “will make things right” – and she will “turn this farm into a home” just like Howard wanted.
When Pearl’s smile first breaks out, it is performed for Howard. It is there to “make things right” and to underscore her welcome to him for she is, on the surface at least, “so glad” that Howard is home. Her smile, then, is initially one of joy, of happiness that her husband is alive, his body free of injury or disability from the war. They are together again in the family homestead, a safe space in which to enjoy married life and raise a family. It is also there to reassure him, that despite the dreadful tableaux in the dining room, everything is as it should be, for, in Pearl’s mind at least, she has turned “this farm into a home” and Howard is to be warmly welcomed into it, to sit at the dining table with his extended family and enjoy an honest, home-cooked meal because this is what Pearl thinks he wants her to become, a hardworking housewife who supports, looks after, loves and provides for her husband.
But as Pearl struggles to hold onto her smile, the reality of her situation and of what she has really become are all communicated: the faltering smile is an expression of Pearl’s effort to repress the fact that Howard’s return to the farm, healthy and without injury, is not a happy event but one that has forever sealed her fate. She will now never be able to escape the farm, never audition again, never become a Chorus Girl, never be free. The strain to maintain that happy smile is really the struggle to suppress all the anger and rage she feels at Howard’s return. The tears are not of happiness or joy but of sadness for the loss of what she could have become. She will never be a famous Chorus Girl, she will just be a housewife, a farmer out in the middle of nowhere. Her nearly unflinching stare, almost as fixed but as faltering as her smile, compounds this realisation. Pearl looks straight at both Howard and the camera, her gaze expressing an almost perverse adoration of Howard but also, in the barely held-back tears, acknowledging her personal loss. It is also utterly unhinged, a consuming manic stare that confirms her psychopathic state. Its expression of madness contrasts with the near-perfect symmetry of her appearance – the neatly centre-parted hair, the balanced, innocent white lace ribbons behind each ear and the regularity of her pearly white teeth – all offset against that manic gaze. And, in that manic gaze, Pearl reveals who she really is and has been all along: not a housewife or farmer but a deranged psychopath.
James Rose is an independent film academic who specialises in Horror and Science Fiction Film and Television. His first authored book, Beyond Hammer: British Horror Cinema since 1970 was published by Auteur in 2009. Since then he has continued to author books and has been widely published in a range of international peer-reviewed edited collections including Future Folk Horror (Lexington Books) and Lost Souls of Horror and Gothic (McFarland) alongside publications with the British Film Institute, Senses of Cinema, Offscreen and Studies in Comics.
