The story follows two dissimilar sisters from early childhood through the teen years and compares their development to the finished products embodied by their equally different Mother and aunt. One is desperate to belong, to fit in. The other sees few virtues in conformity, especially in their rural setting. “Housekeeping” has many different meanings. In one sense they are codependents trapped by their unwillingness to leave the house and its isolation behind. It was built by a grandfather they never met who moved to the area on a personal quest not shared by his wife or children and was held on to as much out of stubbornness as lack of ambition. In another sense, the upkeep or disorder of the house defines them as individuals within the larger world. Perhaps most of all it is the spiritual house within them, the comfy dreams or empty rooms left behind when hopes and plans prove false or inadequate.
Bill Forsyth specializes in teasing out the complex incongruities and lack of place in modern life. Marilynne Robinson’s novel about a small dysfunctional family in an isolated environmentally chaotic rural community was ideal for him. Alan Hunter wrote an article about Forsyth in From Limelight to Satellite: A Scottish Film Book, edited by Eddie Dick. In it, Forsyth noted:
I fell in love with the book so much I wanted to possess it. It was an act of larceny … To my mind the entertainment was in the idea of these two girls, in a situation where they had no choice, latching on to whatever was given to them and all that was given to them was this completely inadequate loon. Like these ducks when they come out of the egg – the first thing they see, they love it and they follow it about. The fun in the situation for me was in standing back from it and seeing these completely inadequate people forced upon each other.
Bill Forsyth grew up as the son of a Scottish plumber, left school at seventeen, and worked at a number of menial jobs before finding one such job in a Glasgow film company producing industrial and training films. As he learned more about film, he began to work with poor young actors and students on possible film projects. Most of his characters are lost in some way or another. Forsyth noted: “I think we’re basically all odd. I think we all have a tension between what we think we are and what other people think we are … Strangeness is in everyone, it’s just a matter of whether you choose to reveal it or not.” His films respect those on the fringes and question the rules we accept about how life works. As the great American critic Andrew Sarris wrote: “what we have here is nothing less than a humanist disguised as a humorist.” The dismal world described within his films is deep, honest, and without malice.
His version of Robinson’s book enlarges on her views by engaging the audience as participants on the journeys both girls take where Robinson uses one girl as a narrator describing the other. Where does health end and dysfunction begin? Is it saner to bury your personal quirks within conformity, or to proudly embrace your own strangeness? What does it mean to belong? What do you gain or lose by choosing one path over another? His isolated microcosm is true to its own rural logic, but who populates the cities if not the refugees from this less furious existence? Neither the conformist nor the transient is let off the hook in his engaging exploration of their lives.