The Most Hated Woman in America
Netflix
The team of director Tommy O’Haver and screenwriter Irene Turner reunite to tell the morbid true story of American Atheists founder Madalyn Murray O’Hair’s strange rise to prominence, and eventual downward spiral. Melissa Leo leads the small cast, portraying the woman in question as a voracious, unreserved powder keg who didn’t take anyone’s guff, turned her life around on her own, and single handedly led a commanding crusade for religious freedom in America. On the other hand she was also vicious, self-centered, and obsessed with money. She alienated her son, worked tirelessly, and the end of her life was as strange as the rest of it.
The film starts well enough, setting up the strange circumstances of an old woman, her son, and granddaughter being kidnapped and held for ransom. From there we flash back to the ruminations of Madalyn’s crusade against organized religion’s place within American schools. This was during the fifties, a time when women weren’t valued for their opinions. Add to that fact that she was crusading to end prayer in school, a highly contentious and inflammatory stance in fifties America, and you have to admit the woman possessed grit. Madalyn not only made waves for atheists, but women as well, and spent the next forty years being a vehement voice amongst the galling era of televangelism.
This film closely mirrors O’Haver and Turner's other collaboration, An American Crime, another film based on a horrific true story. That film covered the torture and death of a teenager, and this film is about a family being murdered. In both these instances the pair court interest in the obscene and horrific without giving much insight or correct use of tone, throughout. This interpretation has all the markings of being scared of delving into the psychological issues of such a crime.
Though what’s most interesting is Madalyn’s iconic yet wayward status, the film puts most of the story’s emphasis on her relationships with her children and granddaughter (a mostly silent Juno Temple) and the path that led to her current abduction. While the entire story is quite interesting, it didn’t need to all be up on the screen, a position that many modern day biopics take. While the tone of most of the film strays between bittersweet sarcasm and polarizing wackiness, the ending is tragic and grotesque. It’s very off-putting because of this strange choice and many others. Of all the Netflix films now streaming, this is probably one I would not recommend, though the story itself is fascinating enough to explore on its own.
