At first, her attitudes and behaviors don't make much sense. The director does an excellent job of character development - letting you into the heart, mind and hurts of Hagar little by little. GO! It's not a funny feel-good movie - it's more along the lines of a feel and think movie. I believe that it will be in theaters in Canada some time around Mother's Day. I had a chance to see a screening of this movie recently. Those parts somehow make more sense to me now that I've watched The Stone Angel. but parts of her are present in many women (and men) in my life. Hagar isn't my mother - she isn't even my mother-in-law or neighbor. I understand more clearly that hard edges in a person's life are there to protect, they are there for a reason. What a scene! This isn't a 'feel good' movie, but it is certainly a movie that brings the viewer to empathy.

Ellen Burnstyn, you are a brilliant actor. I especially liked her when she poured out her secrets to the boy in the shack. We find out why she doesn't like petunias, why she favors one son over the other, how her losses have formed her character. Throughout the course of the movie, we get insight. I didn't like her - not even a little bit. She figures it out en-route and freaks out. Hagar (Ellen Burnstyn) is being taken to a nursing home by her son and daughter-in-law. The first scene gets this across without any compromise. Her world has hard edges and she isn't a warm endearing woman at all. The director does a masterful job with the challenge. It's really really tough to have the main character as unlikable as Hagar. This movie is in the same niche genre as 'Away from Her' - or even 'The Bucket List' but handles the whole aging theme with incredible authenticity. Hagar might be an irascible, vicious, and even vulgar old woman, but her feisty resilience makes her one of the most remarkable and appealing characters in Canadian literature.I saw the movie recently and really liked it. When her son threatens to put her into a home, she takes matters into her own hands and seeks refuge in an abandoned canning factory. In this intimate accounting of her life, she recalls her privileged life as the daughter of Manawaka's only merchant, the rebellious spirit that led her to a miserable life as a farm wife, and the devastating death of her favourite child. But she is trapped in a body that is betraying her bit by bit and a mind that overwhelms her with passionate, painful memories. Cantankerous, cranky and often befuddled at 90, Hagar isn't ready to give up her independence and go into an old-age home. The Stone Angel is the story of Hagar Shipley.

The first of Margaret Laurence's compelling series of novels set in Manawaka, the fictional Scots-Irish community that Laurence created based on her childhood home of Neepawa, Manitoba, is also one of her most enduring.

The stone angel author