In yet another movie I had seeking out for sometime, I believe I may have re-discovered another old made-for-TV movie that I only had seen once in Stone Pillow. Stone Pillow stars Lucille Ball in a role that I’m guessing a lot of people wouldn’t recognize her for but might be one of her last ones. Essentially, Lucille Ball plays a bag lady named Florabelle, or simply Flora, who wanders the streets of New York City with her shopping cart containing her most valued possessions. Opposite of her is a young Daphne Zuniga, as Carrie Lang, a recent college graduate whose first job is as a social worker at an agency. This movie portrays a small glimpse into the harsh realities of the homeless plight, even though it’s probably not as dark as it could be.
Flora lives over a grate where she covers herself in plastic trash bags to keep herself warm during the harsh winters of New York City. The locals know her and treat her well enough as she is an honest character who is another down-on-her-luck type. However, Flora has a great deal of pride refusing money but willing to take small hand outs. Her main sense of identity is her shopping cart which has the remnants of her past life stored up as memories.
Carrie is a green social worker on the edge of getting fired by a stringent boss. One of her coworkers encourages her to learn more about people on the street to see their realities as opposed to having studied them from an academic setting. In turn, Carrie takes her coworker’s advice and goes in more street level clothes to get a better feeling for what’s out there. In one of her first encounters with the homeless, she meets a drunk who offers her booze but she refuses for one reason or another (possibly seeing the man’s darkened hand which could be an indication of some disease).
Across the street is Flora who spots someone dumping a loaf of bread into a trash can. Before Flora can obtain the bread, Carrie already had grabbed it and feeds some pigeons with the crumbs. Infuriated, Flora rushes across the street, shopping cart in tow, to intercept Carrie and scold her. Not long after, some thieves try to rob Flora of her cart but is thwarted with her crazy antics. However, the less worldly Carrie has her purse stolen which leaves her helpless. Flora warns Carrie of the asperities of the streets and assumes that Carrie is a runaway. Carrie doesn’t quite admit what her actual job is but clings to Flora for the rest of the day and night as she effectively has no wallet nor ID.
Flora takes up Carrie and tries to give her the education of the streets. From there, she tries to teach Carrie about eating, dealing with the soreness of her feet as well as where to rest. By night, the onslaught of the New York City cold assaults the pair as they attempt to find a safe spot to rest. Carrie complains about how cold it is where Flora hands the young lady her teddy bear and a few other things to try and help keep her warm. A dog comes by and Flora invites it to rest with them, knowing the dog can help keep them warm and safe. However, a police man pushes them out.
They continue to move from place to place during the night as the city is highly unwelcoming towards their kind. They try to sneak into certain warmer spots such as Grand Central Station but must be cautious as the guards refuse them entry. To keep her cart safe, Flora disguises a storage room as an office to use the restroom. In another section, they try to get a few hours of rest near the engine room. There, Carrie gets Flora to reveal more about her past where she reveals how she had a proper home previously, a husband and son but bills from a hospital scared off the husband and left her with nothing (funny how somethings never change). Her story gets a little generic in a way in describing how she was getting welfare checks until she was kicked out and the checks couldn’t come as a result of not having a proper address.
Later on, the pair go to another section where more homeless people reside temporarily. Amongst them is a census man called Max. Carrie learns more about the backstories of the other impoverished people living in the underground while Flora goes off to find medicine for Carrie’s aching stomach. However, Max suspects that Carrie isn’t homeless and his hunch proves correct when Carrie reveals how she hates bugs.
In the meantime, Flora goes solo to meet a compassionate pharmacist who likes her. In the past, the pharmacist had helped provide Flora medicine and the two have a suggested rapport with one another. Like others in that part of town apparently, the pharmacist also is facing problems as his own landlord is causing him to close shop (anyone think of George Carlin’s “the Owners” of this country routine when you hear these kinds of stories?) The pharmacist does suggest that the two get together at some point as both are aged but Flora’s priority remains in getting the medicine to Carrie.
Back at the underground zone, the police bust the area and push all the transients out. By the time Flora returns, most of the transients have been kicked out and the officers refuse to let Flora in with her cart. However, Max is still skulking around and informs Flora where they most likely took Carrie. Flora takes off in search of Carrie at the place she resents the most: another agency for the homeless. Flora rudely bursts into the place where she manages to find Carrie. However, Carrie now has changed her attire to something more suitable and it becomes quite apparent that Carrie isn’t a runaway as Flora assumed. Flora feels betrayed and used while Carrie’s manager scolds her in his office.
During the bustle though, a bus comes in to transport the people (with a ticket) to a shelter. Somehow, Flora gets caught up in the group and is assumed to be part of them. Separated from her cart, Flora becomes loud and attempts to convince everyone that she’s not with the group nor crazy. The group is taken to a Brooklyn shelter where Flora tries to argue that she doesn’t belong. At first, Flora tries to leave but the harsh streets of the unfamiliar Brooklyn territory immediately dissuade Flora into returning.
Yet she proves unruly which puts her in a precarious status with the shelter. Quickly, she gets into trouble and evicted (with the shelter taking her meager $3 or so) and forcing her back on the street. In the meantime, Carrie attempts to reconnect with Flora but the administration there are both apathetic and completely unhelpful. Unfortunately, Flora must cope with a night without her cart, her warm grate and the familiar surroundings and ends up in a derelict building where she discovers a miniature horse statue and reminisces about her previous life, particularly seeing her son.
Somehow Flora manages to survive the night and struggles to get back on her feet. She encounters a cat and follows it, knowing she could get possibly get an easy meal. Her assumptions prove correct and she nabs some of the poor cat’s food (probably tuna) before trying to locate the subway to get back to her “proper” home.
On the other side of town, Carrie searches for Flora around various places she had visited in her journey with Flora. She meets a familiar face of another bag woman, who looks cleaned up but is familiar with Max. In turn, Carrie goes to Max to see if he can offer any help. Max scolds her naivety but ends up offering to take her to where Flora normally resides. She brings the cart (in Max’s car) and finds the grate where a bunch of trash bags lay bundled. Both see an unmoving person lying underneath the trash bags and assume it’s Flora. Some bystanders who are familiar with Flora go to question what’s going on and Max tells them to contact an ambulance as the person lying under the trash bags probably is dead.
Carrie feels guilty knowing that Flora in all likelihood at her age and vulnerability probably won’t make it out on the streets much longer. However, Flora has returned and responds to the various events very coldly. The only thing she cares about is getting her cart back and impatiently awaiting the clean up of the body that has taken her spot. However, Carrie still feels some sense of duty towards Flora, especially after what she went through.
Yet Flora still is hurt from the betrayal and feeling used, having her pride and being stubborn. Carrie says she can help restore some of Flora’s past life such as getting her a home with a garden through some friends she contacted. Nonetheless, because Carrie used Flora’s son’s name to try and goad Flora into changing her attitude towards life, Flora remains impassive. As the paramedics arrive and carry off the body, Flora realizes that could be her next especially with the previous night’s close call.
At that point, the credits begin rolling as we see the finale of Flora’s decision where Carrie drives Flora to a quiet home and Flora, now cleaned up again, runs to the dirt area and smells the ground while Carrie smiles at her.
So most reviews will describe this movie being really the Lucille Ball performance. And in truth it was. You forget that Lucille Ball is playing a bag lady and delve into this small sad world of a lost soul with her small life. Everything Lucille does here is magnetic and she steals every scene she’s in. While her personality can be 0utrageous at times, nothing she really says is beyond reason. What’s even more ironic is the fact that you have at times one of the greatest actresses ever as this homeless character while looking upon the elite.
But the problem with this movie is similar in a way to the other movie I reviewed in this type of socioeconomic genre around this period in A Long Way Home. Part of the problem is that there’s a slight romanticization of how homeless is portrayed even though Lucille does so with a certain level of austerity. However, it feels as though this movie barely scratches the surface of the plight of the homeless, although it tries to point out high level problems with matters such as the bureaucratic, unfeeling government organizations, the pragmatic concerns of how a poor person cannot get a welfare check without an address, the ever climbing cost of living.
Part of the problem is that Lucille Ball simply is too charming and charismatic to take seriously. The minute she wakes up she does so in an almost comedic manner like “here I am! Check out these loose threads!” as she climbs her way out of her plastic bag bed. The way she drinks and uses the water hose is equally made more for a Broadway stage than for an aging bag lady. And the people in her immediate vicinity treat her more like royalty. When she encounters the kids who try to steal from her, I find myself unconvinced that she could handle herself as equally as why they would want anything from her shopping cart. If anything kids like that would only attempt to amuse themselves through bullying her.
Where things get a little muddled for me is the intersection of Carrie with Flora. I read how Daphne Zuniga was a woeful choice to play as Lucille Ball’s foil. Perhaps, Daphne was simply too inexperienced at this stage in her career while Lucille Ball was pretty much the grand focus of this movie. But Carrie was very muted while around Flora or very whiny. I never was convinced that of Flora taking Carrie under her wing and suddenly believing that Carrie was homeless/a runaway. At the end, Carrie does point out that Flora put that idea in her own mind but it doesn’t justify why Carrie would suddenly live in that manner with Flora.
I did feel the real issues of homelessness come up once it became nightfall and Carrie complained about how cold it was. When I visited Tokyo, I would stay a super cheap ryokan/backpackers inn in Minowa. Later, I found out that Minowa was considered one of the poorest areas in Japan (or at least Tokyo). One of the people I met at the inn took me one night for a walk and we encountered this huge homeless encampment where just before, I had been hit by a horrible emanation that stunk of dirty underwear, almost like raw piss that had become stale for days. Along a wall, I witnessed a large number of sleeping bags and blankets bundled up close to each other and that wall of piss smell that was fairly warm in the cold Tokyo winter. The person mentioned about the problem as well as one of the front desk workers and they said many during the winter wouldn’t make it. When we wandered near one of the shopping streets, I saw more homeless people gathering underneath as the shops closed down. Similarly, over in Ueno before they refurbished the train station, many homeless would be allowed underneath the station at night during the winter as there was a huge homeless encampment (tent city) in the park.
From there, the film would spread its focus around on the homeless plight, offering small stories that Max would share about various people living in that underground. Many seemed to overlap such as welfare checks, people losing jobs, not being able to pay for their apartments, landlords evicting their tenants, etc. However, the people supposedly meant to help in the administration all seemed apathetic because of the nature of their job. The individual stories of people didn’t matter and the bureaucrats only would care about whether or not rules were being followed in order for these homeless people being able to receive any aid. In general, there’s a very cold atmosphere and lack of compassion that matches the freezing nights of New York City.
When it comes to Carrie, she’s not given much character development at all. She feels more like a generic, doe eyed individual who starts off idealistic but has no sense of reality. You want to feel sorry for her because of what she has to endure but the issue with this movie is that she only experiences her condition for a single day. And Flora probably sees through some of that which is why she’s so cynical. In a way, Carrie almost functions like Rose from A Long Way Home in that she’s more of a support device than an actual person. Also, she’s given about as much depth as the counselor Lilian in A Long Way Home where we don’t more about Carrie’s motives beyond “she just wants to make a difference.”
Part of the issue for this movie similar to A Long Way Home is that it ends abruptly. We don’t really get a resolution to Flora’s son nor husband. Instead, she’s mysteriously gifted with a home where we don’t even get to see the proper tenant and that’s it. Yes, Flora gets her feel good moment but that’s it?
Similarly, it’s hard to feel more empathetic towards Carrie because of how she only spends a single day in that situation. It’s not even a taste of the reality that homeless must face, which is similar to how I think the audience is treated here. Too much time, for instance, is spent on a romance side plot that went nowhere with the pharmacist.
Also, there’s small bits of attempts at stabbing social commentary towards the NIMBY (not in my backyard) syndrome such as two people arguing about Flora’s disappearance. Neither would admit to actually helping Flora by giving her any sense of compassion in letting her stay with them for even a single night. Instead, Flora is more like a familiar fixture but her actual value is low because of her homeless status. The rest of the city treat her and the homeless in the same manner where there’s a sense of obligation to do something about the homeless but the execution, intent and care simply do not exist for most people.
Nonetheless, it’s hard to not feel sympathy towards Flora, who, in this story, is merely a victim of circumstance. Although Flora has managed to endure through street smarts, most people would realize that she’s on her literal last legs just as the epiphany for Flora had occurred towards the end. I think part of the sadness is that her remaining meaning was her shopping cart. Most people probably won’t ever empathize with how those with little to nothing left may cling to the small things left in their possession. It’s the only memories of a previous life that probably keep people like Flora going. There’s a callousness from the administration too where they seem eager to discard these people’s belongings then set them loose again without really doing proper check ups. Possibly in a person like Flora, even if they were temporarily setup they couldn’t survive without a continual guarantee of aid because of age or other factors like mental illness (which some of the homeless here were portrayed to have).
The real tragedy in a story like this is that it was released in 1985. We’re about to hit 2025 which means 40 years have passed and the conditions of people have not truly improved. When you read stories such as the recent murder of the United Health Care CEO and the lack of compassion towards executives, especially towards the insurance industry where many have lost their lives due to denial from insurance claims, these issues have not been solved. Possibly with the introduction of AI, these issues are worse off than ever especially with Wallstreet and other laws putting more emphasis on quarterly profits than ever before.
When I first saw this movie (and I do believe this could be the one), it hit home because of how I felt bad for the bag lady. Since my mother grew up poor, I’ve always felt sympathetic towards the plight of the impoverished and working class. Part of my sympathy towards Flora is that I saw a parallel potentially with my mother. When my mother had her stroke, she was forced to give up everything too in order to receive any aid in this country. How fucking stupid is that? It’s hard not to feel any empathy for these CEOs when they’re assaulted because of how the world is devolving. All the technology we’re creating can’t solve some of the most direst issues that have persisted forever and that probably won’t change in the near future.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.