Synopsis/Details
All Accolades & Coverage
-Pitch Now Screenplay Competition 2019 FINALIST
-Screencraft Public Domain Screenplay Contest 2019 Finalist
BLACKLIST COMMENTS (2019)
"This screenplay does an excellent job building Tillie's character. The early pages give the reader a clear sense of just how gifted and intellectually curious she is thanks to the way she asks about the Bible and reads novels voraciously (despite the risk). In other words, the idea that Tillie is "hungry to learn" is palpable. She's a really likable lead too. Her considerate, humble personality is well-captured as she divides her cinnamon roll and supposes she'll never have "fancy things". Of course, it's easy to sympathize with Tillie as Jacob abuses her, and because her precociousness is so evident, Jacob deciding she's done with school feels like an enormous escalation. Jacob's physical abuse is his most abhorrent trait, but the fact that he's almost proud of finishing Tillie's mother's funeral "in an hour" is a clever detail to convey his dubious personality as well. Absalom is also well-written. The descriptors "sweet" and "dumb" on page 57 feel perfectly appropriate. And, because Absalom is so smitten with Tillie, his bad news for her on page 111 is especially intriguing; we wonder if he might be lying to her about her job in order to change her mind about marriage. After all, he's already lied to Walter. Lastly, the dialogue is consistently strong. It's well-paced and the accents are smartly captured."
"This has all the delicacy of plotting and nuance of emotion of a 19th century novel, and the writers clearly have adapted all the lessons of good drama from Austen and Bronte (and their offspring). Tillie is an expertly navigated character, her unflappable dignity and sense of female honor exactly molded to resemble that of Jane Eyre, and there's nothing wrong with that if it is astutely done, and it is. It finds its own individual topic of exploration in the religious angle found here, with Tillie's coming-of-age found in her implicit critique of the Mennonite lifestyle when she disavows it - but continues to live an even more deprived life. It's a genuine show of her self-respect and the strength of her goals, even if she has resigned never to reach them. The portrait of this character is simply very strong, and has all the emotions of sadness, melancholy, desire, admiration, etc. that is a prerequisite of these sort of narratives. Dialogue and interaction between characters is strong and believable, and every scene is calibrated to exact specifications while never going overboard in scenes of violence or overt emotion. Respectable, competent writing all the way of a strongly conceived story."
