The Tartan

By Hailey Cohen

The movie “Eileen,” set in a gloomy, 1960s Massachusetts winter, focuses on a young woman named Eileen who works at a boys juvenile prison. She leads a dreary life, constantly being berated by her older coworkers, insulted by her alcoholic father, and generally ignored by everyone else. However, when a stylish new female psychologist comes to work at the prison, Eileen’s life changes. In her complete admiration of the psychologist, she gets pulled into a violent scheme that breaks the previously mundane pattern of her life.

I read the novel “Eileen” by Ottessa Moshfegh a few years ago. The aspect of the book that stands out most in my mind is how nasty it is. Moshfegh has gained popularity in the past few years for her novels “My Year of Rest and Relaxation,” “Death in Her Hands,” and “Homesick for Another World,” among others. Having read two (almost three) of her books, a common theme that I saw between them was that they were all off-putting and somewhat uncanny.

Moshfegh is unique as an author because she is unafraid to make the reader really, really uncomfortable. “Death in Her Hands” made me feel sick and like I was going crazy, and I started reading “Homesick for Another World,” but had to stop because it was grossing me out so much. She manages to put characters in the most grotesque, disgusting positions in her books, something that definitely has appeal to some people, but that I was on the fence about.

I liked the book “Eileen” because it was a little bit less sickening than Moshfegh’s other books. It had an interesting narrative and a somewhat-likable main character. As a Massachusetts resident, I appreciated the characterization of Massachusetts winters as hard and isolating, which I understood very well (hooray for sunsets at 4 p.m.). 

An important aspect of the novel is having access to the twisted daydreams that Eileen constructs out of the dreariness of her life. In the movie, one or two of those daydreams were portrayed in quick flashes with little to no explanation. This made the movie lack the intensity of the book. Without that look into Eileen’s psyche, I lost some of the distortion of the character and how she views the world. She comes off as a regular young woman who is not happy with her life, while in the book she has a rich and intriguing inner monologue. Maybe that is simply something that is lost when making books into movies, but it left me unsatisfied either way.

Stylistically, I thought the movie looked good. The austerity of the prison and Eileen’s home contrasted greatly with the psychologist’s rich wood-clad office and elegant fashion style. The fact that Anne Hathaway played the psychologist was a surprise to me in the theater, and while I do love Anne Hathaway, I thought she was slightly unconvincing in this role. Maybe I just don’t think she looks good as a blonde. Thomasin McKenzie was wonderful and filled the titular role very well. She even managed a subtle Boston accent despite hailing from New Zealand, which I appreciated. 

Overall, I was not the biggest fan of the book “Eileen,” but I definitely thought that the movie could have been better. I felt like I did not really know the motivations of the main character, and some plot lines felt a little muddled because we could not hear what Eileen was thinking. But if you’re looking for a psychological thriller about a girl who has a bad life, this could be for you.