Movie Review: Hello, My Name is Doris
“Thy life’s a miracle. Speak yet again.” –King Lear, Act 4, Scene VI
There is an oft said phrase that tragedy plus time equals comedy. Put another way, personal tragedy when viewed from a distance is sometimes quite funny. When college students study Camus or Kafka, if indeed they still study them at all, they generally discuss the absurdity and tragedy of The Stranger and The Metamorphosis. I posit that if they do not find the humor at all in these stories, they have missed a key point in appreciating the absurd. Absurdity is funny, whether it is a man who awakens transformed as a giant insect whose only concern is getting to work on time or Mel Brooks’ King Louis XVI sexually harassing the women of the Court whilst saying, “It’s good to be the King.” Find humor and appreciate life’s little absurdities and minutiae. Hello, My Name is Doris is about several things, but it is chiefly a comedy about finding happiness and putting one’s life in order after tragedy. It is a solid premise, and it is a quirky yet charming tale of an aging woman trying to enjoy the world and find love after the death of her mother; find a life that she previously had the chance to have, but turned down decades ago.
Hello, My Name is Doris opens with a funeral. Doris (Sally Field), her brother Todd (Stephen Root), and a few well-wishers are attending the funeral of Doris’ and Todd’s mother. Doris has been caring for her mother for years, yet Todd and his wife Cynthia (Wendi McClendon-Covey) seem more preoccupied with getting Doris to sell her things and move out of the house, so they can sell the place. Doris is very reluctant to do so, but tentatively agrees to see a therapist about her hoarding. When Doris goes back to work, she has a run in with John Fremont (Max Greenfield), the new and attractive art director at the office. Doris becomes smitten with John and has wild fantasies about him, and attempts to find many ways to get close to and spend time with him. The granddaughter of her best friend Roz (Tyne Daly) helps Doris by creating a fake Facebook account to friend John and learn about him. Doris discovers John’s taste in music, and the two gradually begin to grow a friendship, with John being one of the few people in the office to take an interest in Doris other than being the odd old lady of the building. The plot line moves fairly predictably from here with complicating love interests, intersecting lives etc. but the themes and performances are what really make the film work.
The first major theme in the film is inclusion and finding a place where to belong. Doris is an aging woman and, due to her hoarding, has wild and conflicting fashion tastes and furniture in her house and cubicle. Her coworkers do not have much to do with her, as she is the last holdover from when the company was bought out by current ownership. Her coworkers also seem to be totally unaware that her mother has recently passed. Her own brother and sister-in-law do not understand Doris and insist she get therapy so they can sell her house. It is not until Doris goes to a Baby Goya and the Nuclear Winters concert to meet John that she finds a place and people that embrace her eccentricities. Decked out in an old, bright colored jumpsuit and matching visor, the hipsters at the Baby Goya concert love Doris. They find her fascinating and stylish, even though her choices are based completely on the hoard of things she has in her home and in her effort to befriend John. Baby Goya himself finds Doris fascinating and unique, and insists she become the cover model for his new album. The hipsters are all amazed that Doris lives on Staten Island and her life stories. To them, she is just another cool woman. The youth embracing this woman and welcoming her into their group was amazing and very well done. Just because the rest of the world did not seem to understand or care about Doris, or the collection of hipsters she falls in with, does not mean she has no value as a person. Quite the opposite.
The second major theme at play in the film is sacrifice and care for family. Doris is a hoarder and so was her mother. Her father left them early on in life. Doris also relays to John the heartbreaking story of when she was engaged. A young journalist wanted to marry her and asked her to move with him to Arizona for his new job, which would require Doris to leave her mother. Doris refused because she felt that her mother would die if left alone. Towards the end of her life, Doris was feeding and bathing her mother, without help, and still working every day. Her brother was not there. During one of the most emotional scenes of the film, Todd and Cynthia and the therapist come to the house to help Doris clean the house and remove all the clutter. Doris is greatly upset by Cynthia’s callousness, and breaks down, saying that Todd was never there for her or her mother. Todd tells Doris that they had an agreement years ago, that she would take care of their mother so he could start a business and raise a family. Todd does not see or does not believe Doris when she says she could have had those things too. By neglecting their mother then trying to uproot Doris from the only home she’s ever known, Todd and Cynthia do not realize the underlying hurt at the root of Doris’s problems. Instead of helping Doris get herself put together and find a life, they try to rip away everything to which she is holding without addressing the deeper pain. This theme struck hard at the dysfunction of the American family, when we discard the elderly and our responsibilities to care for one another as family members.
The third theme of the film is about embracing reality and putting one’s life in order. Doris lives mostly in a fantasy world in her head. She has been cooped up with her mother for decades, only coming and going from work and occasionally going with Roz to the YWCA. The motivational speaker that gets the ball rolling for Doris has the mantra, “I’m possible,” instead of using the word impossible. Doris begins to believe that if she works at it, she can make her fantasies about John a reality. She behaves like a young teenage girl infatuated with a boy. She hoards anything she finds in case she might need it one day. Her life is a collection of oddities and memories. When John, gently, puts her fantasy to rest, Doris finally awakens to making a change in her life. She gets rid of all the stuff she hoarded and sells the house, and even leaves her job at the end of the film. The things and the house literally held her in place after her mother died, preventing Doris from finding a life of her own. It was only by letting go and facing the truth that she was able to move on. This theme is even more important for audiences as we all collect oddities and memories that we believe make up our lives. We assign sentimental value to everything, but making a change requires us to let go, throw away, and move on.
Sally Field is a dynamo in this movie. She melts seamlessly into Doris, brining every little quirk and gesture to life. Her glances and fidgeting are all precise and feel completely authentic. She also gets to show off her range, taking us to comic highs and powerful emotional lows in the film. What could easily have been a movie about a crazy old lady is elevated by her performance. She makes Doris approachable, believable, and almost too real, if there is such a thing. She already has Oscar gold for Norma Rae (1979) and Places in the Heart (1985), but Hello, My Name is Doris is equally worthy of praise and an Academy Award nomination.
Max Greenfield and the rest of the cast are equally praiseworthy. Greenfield is most known for his role as Schmidt on New Girl, and it is nice to see him play a role that does not require him to be the comedic heavy. He makes John charming and highly likeable, and his kindness to Doris is very sweet and honest. Beth Behrs puts in a brief appearance as John’s girlfriend, Brooklyn, who also befriends Doris despite the protagonist’s attempts to keep John to herself. Tyne Daly plays a surrogate mother and friend to Doris from her past, and one of the few folks to keep Doris grounded whilst still caring about her and her well-being. The office workers are full of familiar faces from other comedies and well known shows including Silicon Valley, Mad Men, and Orange is the New Black. In short, every character and cast member feels natural and not out of place.
In conclusion, Hello, My Name is Doris is a charming indie comedy anchored by a terrific performance by Sally Field and interesting thematic elements. Doris’ life is a miracle in that she simply exists. We laugh with her and at the funny little things she does because we can appreciate the absurdity of the older woman’s fantasies. Doris’ life is not a tragedy, it is a triumph. This film forces the audience to grip with finding belonging, what it means to be family, and how to put a disordered and fractured life back together. The film might be predictable at times, but we care so much about Doris that we cringe at her mistakes, laugh at the strangeness, and dread the moment when John finally becomes aware of Doris’ infatuation. When an indie comedy makes you care about the characters and exists beyond its quirkiness, it has succeeded as a film.
4 stars out of 5
