The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio

This movie is based on a memoir the author wrote about her mother.

A post-WW2 housewife Evelyn (Julianne Moore) enters contest after contest in order to make ends meet for her large family, winning free food, bikes, home appliances. Her husband Kelly (Woody Harrelson), after a deferred singing career, now works at a factory, and resents her ingenuity and good luck because it makes him feel as if he can't provide for the family. He becomes increasingly depressed and is an angry alcoholic, which the older kids can't help but see and fear. Evelyn on the other hand keeps a stiff upper lip and tries to maintain the facade of a happy home, and tries to protect her children as much as she can, but it appears she is on a slow boil.

The film is told both in a dramatic style as well as a heightened fantasy style. Evelyn talks to the audience and a few animated sequences and bright sets show the prizes she's won or the jingles she's written. Laura Dern plays another mother in a very similar situation who befriends Evelyn.

Moore does an admirable job keeping her character this side of saccharine. You can see the hidden hurts, the words she has to swallow, the pains she takes on, in order to keep her kids happy and to compensate for the love they are missing from their father. In a way, through the contests, Evelyn is maintaining her independence from her husband, and what she suffers is not for herself but for the children. Kelly does nothing to help his situation and in fact is increasingly petty and irresponsible, although Harrelson was the perfect actor for this part. Although we see Kelly's anger, we also see clues to how he came to be this sort of man.

The kids were not portrayed as overly cute and were good actors too, even the little ones. The film, like Moore, keeps it light enough so that the darker aspects of the film don't overshadow the characters. The more lighthearted elements, like the contest jingles or visit with Laura Dern's character and other ladies, bring some humor. Even through the end Evelyn's cheeky humor remains.