Why Can’t I?: Pearl, Dorothy, Mia, and Judy
(spoilers for PEARL follow)
I’m not the first to notice that Ti West’s new film PEARL is an homage to 1939’s THE WIZARD OF OZ. The real question, I think, is “Why, tho?” Sure, vibrant colors are interesting and fun in a horror setting, and rural landscapes lend themselves beautifully to the trapped-at-home horror film trope. But why bother retreading such trodden ground? To me, PEARL seems less like an OZ homage and more of a dystopic answer to the question: What would have happened to Dorothy if she never got out of Kansas?
We all know Dorothy (Judy Garland) but, as a quick refresh, she’s a farm girl who wants to go “somewhere over the rainbow,” and she identifies more with her pets than the people around her. These things should sound familiar because Pearl shares them. Essentially, Pearl is Dorothy’s foil. Sure, there are differences that I’d be remiss not to mention (and I will acknowledge them later), but the one desire that drives both characters is that they both want out.
Most people can identify with wanting out of a situation, but what PEARL seems to underscore is the concept that as much as we Americans like to believe we live in a meritocracy, the American Dream is random, and the people who get out are lucky.
The book of the same name by L. Frank Baum acknowledged economic issues through allegory (straw man representing farmers who couldn’t represent themselves, tin man representing heartless industry, et al). The 1939 film adaptation abandoned that metaphor for a more picturesque film. The film PEARL ropes us back in to the flawed nature of the idea that anyone can be anything on their own merit: achievement requires luck, too.
By most accounts, Dorothy is not lucky. She’s raised by Uncle Henry and Aunt Em because her parents are presumably dead. The adults dismiss her because they’re busy at their tasks, and although they might not be explicitly subject to the discrimination of German farmers that Pearl’s family experiences, Aunt Em does give everyone krullers. Dorothy does happen upon Professor Marvel, who tries to help her feel better, but, ultimately, she gets her lucky break during a cyclone, when a window frame knocks her in the head. Then she has wild, technicolor hallucinations of Oz. These fantastic visions allow her to experience the life she wants, slake that thirst for somewhere else, and “return” home a much more fulfilled girl. I haven’t had a concussion or a coma, so I don’t know how realistic those dreams can be. My guess is, at least according to the film, they’re pretty realistic. Circumstances considered, it’s pretty fortunate.
When you don’t get the chance to see what all’s out there, not even vicariously, even though you have a very clear dream and a strategy to execute it, when you keep trying and trying only to be shot down absentmindedly by some sad sack who doesn’t know a thing about dance or pageantry based on his own clothes… that’s just bad luck. And frankly, considering all that effort, I get why you’d want to come out of that motherfucker blasting.
But let’s look at Pearl through the lens of Oz: ostensibly, it’s Pearl’s lot in life to be raised by an abusive, resentful German mother who’s been discriminated against because of the second world war. And Pearl’s father, rendered immobile and somewhat absent by the ravages of influenza, is the only emotional thing keeping her tied to the farm. Though Pearl is not a child, like Dorothy, her mother repeatedly infantilizes her, and she lives at home, despite marrying the rich farm hand that she was sure would get her off the farm.
I think it’s important to acknowledge, too, that Pearl really does have the chops to make it off the farm. She possesses both the creativity and the drive. Her imagination is frighteningly vivid, in fact. The opening credits show her dancing in her room—an image which her mother shatters. After riding home from the movies, she stops in the cornfield for a quick rendezvous with a scarecrow, where she waltzes with him in a clearing until she imagines he comes onto her, at which point she throws him down and yells, “I’m married!” before dry humping him and taking his top hat home as a souvenir. Even her audition onstage turns into a whole USO number before the judge shuts her down.
That judge admits she has the skill, even though he denies her the role, saying they’re looking for someone more all-American, blonder, and younger. That’s unlucky. She can’t control any of those qualities, and there’s no way for her to have known what they were looking for. The means were extreme (murdering her whole family) but she was so desperate for success and freedom that she really just was not letting anyone hold her back. She did everything she could. She was just unlucky.
Speaking of bad luck, I can only imagine how many imaginative, skilled kids’ chances went over the rainbow during our 2020+ pandemic, let alone Pearl’s chances with both the influenza pandemic and World War II and an awful family life and a husband who chose to go to war, and no virtual interactions at all.
Howard blew her first plan. Pearl believes his sister blew her second plan. And it’s the realization of her misfortune and ultimate failure that drives Pearl to that final murder.
Earlier, I said that the main similarity between Dorothy and Pearl was that they wanted out, but they have one other huge commonality: both actors absolutely crush these roles. Mia Goth’s prowess blooms in two particular places. First, she shows her skill in the monologue where she confesses and explains her situation to Mitzy in full detail, expanding not on the facts of the character (since we already know those), but the ambition and emotion that drove her to the break. Viewers are just captivated as Pearl weeps and reveals that she should have known none of her plans would work. It’s not until she verbalizes this hopelessness, though, that the magnitude of being stuck on the farm forever really seems to take. That reality check seems to provoke Pearl into her first kill from jealous rage. It appears that she killed her mother, father, and projectionist lover because they were holding her back from her dreams, whereas she kills Mitzy with an ax because Mitzy Pearl believes the poor woman got the life that Pearl had been scheming for.
Howard finally returns from the war after that murder to a devastated house: the corpses of Pearl’s mother and father sit propped at the dining table around the rotting roast pig in Pearl’s futile effort to resume her inevitable farm life. She appears in the hallway with a full pitcher of lemonade, and thus ensues the most powerful performance of the entire film. Though Pearl says “I’m so glad you’re home” with a big smile, Mia Goth’s face throughout the credits illustrates her effort to express a happy façade while coming to terms with her own failure, rage, and devastation at her dreams.
The shot continues for minutes as her expression contorts through a widening forced smile, eyebrows rising in an effort for eagerness, and tears falling all simultaneously before tunneling to black. That inability to reconcile her dreams with her reality plays perfectly on Pearl’s face, and it seems to answer the question of what would have happened if Dorothy never got off the farm.
