Dolores Claiborne (film)

All you want to know about Dolores Claiborne (film)

Dolores Claiborne

Theatrical release poster
Directed by Taylor Hackford
Produced by Charles Mulvehill
Taylor Hackford
Written by Tony Gilroy
Starring Kathy Bates
Jennifer Jason Leigh
Music by Danny Elfman
Hendrik Meurkens
Cinematography Gabriel Beristain
Editing by Mark Warner
Distributed by Columbia Pictures
Release date(s) March 24, 1995
(United States)
Sept. 8, 1995
(United Kingdom)
Running time 132 minutes
Country United States
Language English

Dolores Claiborne is a 1995 film based on the eponymous novel by Stephen King, starring Kathy Bates and Jennifer Jason Leigh. It was directed by Taylor Hackford.

Contents

Plot

As the story begins, Dolores Claiborne (Bates), a middle-aged domestic servant in a coastal town in Maine, is seen standing over her elderly employer, Vera Donovan (Judy Parfitt), with a roller pin. It is then suggested that she kills her boss. A mailman arrives minutes later and sees Vera dead, implying that he calls the police.

Dolores' daughter, Selena St. George (Leigh), a journalist, arrives in town to support her mother. Dolores insists that she did not kill her wealthy employer, but since she is already believed by the public to have murdered her husband, Joe St. George (David Straithairn) almost 30 years earlier, few believe her. One of these people, Detective John Mackey (Christopher Plummer), the chief detective in her husband's murder case, is determined to put her away for life.

Selena and her mother have not spoken for over a decade, mostly due to Selena believing Dolores to have killed Joe (although the death was ruled an accident). As the film develops, the audience learns more about Dolores' troubled past, and of how Joe frequently beat her, until she finally rebelled and warns him never to strike her again or else "one of us is taking a trip to the boneyard".

The film's flashbacks also reveal that Dolores started to suspect Joe of molesting Selena. Dolores went to work for Vera Donovan as a housemaid in order to raise enough money for her to take Selena and flee Joe's wrath, but the plan backfired when Joe started stealing the money from Selena's account.

Back in the present, Mackey refuses to believe that Vera Donovan wanted to commit suicide, and his beliefs are further justified when he reveals to Dolores that Vera has left her her entire fortune. Mackey informs them that the will is eight years old, which near convinces Selena that her mother is guilty. After a fierce argument, Selena storms out, leaving her mother to fend for herself.

Dolores finally decides that it is time to reveal the truth to Selena: she did in fact kill Joe, and it was actually Vera who suggested the plan to her.

In a flashback to a scene some 30 years before, Vera engages in her regular ritual of taunting Dolores, who breaks down crying and confesses her troubled homelife. An uncharacteristically sympathetic Vera implies that she killed her recently deceased husband, and engineered it to look like an accident.

"Sometimes, husbands die...and leave their wives all their money," says Vera to Dolores. "Sometimes they come home from their mistress' apartment, and their brakes fail. Sometimes being a bitch is all a woman has to hold onto."

As an eclipse is approaching, Dolores sends Selena away for the week to work at a hotel to raise money from the high number of tourists. Joe soon returns from a holiday, and as a "treat", Dolores buys him a bottle of whiskey. Dolores reveals that she knows about Joe stealing money from Selena's bank account, as well as molesting her. Dolores lures Joe into a trap she had set in the form of an old well covered by rotted planks of wood. Joe falls into the well and dies after hitting the stone bottom.

Selena hears the story on a tape left for her by Dolores, who had foreseen her departure. While on the ferry, Selena remembers her father molesting her. Realizing that her mother was innocent the whole time and was only protecting her from Joe, Selena rushes back to her mother, who is attending the coroner's inquest, in which Mackey is making the case she be sent to the Grand Jury for murder. Selena tells the police they have no evidence and that the women loved each other. She points out that Dolores could have made much more money working as a hotel maid or for another rich family of "summer people". She points out that, if Dolores had known about the will, that she had eight years to kill Vera, instead of caring for her thanklessly. Knowing that he's flailing at windmills with a very weak case, Mackey begrudgingly lets Dolores go free.

Dolores and Selena make amends to one another on a wharf before Selena returns to Arizona. The film ends with Dolores preparing to start a new life with the fortune she has inherited from Vera.

Locations

The film was shot in Nova Scotia. Westport, Nova Scotia on Brier Island, Nova Scotia provided the ferry and wharfside scenes. A house in Blue Rocks, Nova Scotia served as the St. George family home. Chester, Nova Scotia, Lunenburg, Nova Scotia and Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia provided other locations.

Cast

Actor Role
Kathy Bates Dolores Claiborne
Jennifer Jason Leigh Selena St. George
Judy Parfitt Vera Donovan
Christopher Plummer Detective John Mackey
David Strathairn Joe St. George
Eric Bogosian Peter
John C. Reilly Constable Frank Stamshaw
Ellen Muth Young Selena

See also

External links

v • d • e
Films directed by Taylor Hackford
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolores_Claiborne_(film)"

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