I grew up in a farm town a little smaller than Monrovia. As kids, my brother and I went to daycare on a sweet corn farm run by one of my favorite people on this earth —a 60-year-old Pisces woman with bad knees that says wash like “warsh”. We both learned how to pick corn, shuck it, and sell it for $5/ a dozen by the time we were 6.
I have spent most of my life resenting where I come from. Living in rural America was difficult for me, and I spent my time in college trying to scrub that part of myself off. It was not until recently that my life changed enough to grant me a different perspective.
Movies like Monrovia, Indiana are so, so important. Representation of small towns in film is rarely anything but negative—either they’re painted as backward and hopeless, or romanticized into something unrecognizable (I’m looking at you, Hallmark). This film doesn’t do either. It isn’t a pretty version of rural America by any means, but it is real, and I appreciate that.
Wiseman’s approach is patient and unembellished. He lets the town speak for itself—the silences, the small talk, the routines that make up daily life. Watching it, I saw my childhood, and also remembered that ironically, as a pre-teen I spent a shit ton of time sitting on a bench outside of my local library drinking diet coke from the town’s only gas station. There’s something deeply unsettling about watching a life you tried to escape. But there’s also something healing about it. Monrovia, Indiana doesn’t ask us to love or hate these places—it just asks us to see them.
I grew up in a farm town a little smaller than Monrovia. As kids, my brother and I went to daycare on a sweet corn farm run by one of my favorite people on this earth —a 60-year-old Pisces woman with bad knees that says wash like “warsh”. We both learned how to pick corn, shuck it, and sell it for $5/ a dozen by the time we were 6.
I have spent most of my life resenting where I come from. Living in rural America was difficult for me, and I spent my time in college trying to scrub that part of myself off. It was not until recently that my life changed enough to grant me a different perspective.
Movies like Monrovia, Indiana are so, so important. Representation of small towns in film is rarely anything but negative—either they’re painted as backward and hopeless, or romanticized into something unrecognizable (I’m looking at you, Hallmark). This film doesn’t do either. It isn’t a pretty version of rural America by any means, but it is real, and I appreciate that.
Wiseman’s approach is patient and unembellished. He lets the town speak for itself—the silences, the small talk, the routines that make up daily life. Watching it, I saw my childhood, and also remembered that ironically, as a pre-teen I spent a shit ton of time sitting on a bench outside of my local library drinking diet coke from the town’s only gas station. There’s something deeply unsettling about watching a life you tried to escape. But there’s also something healing about it. Monrovia, Indiana doesn’t ask us to love or hate these places—it just asks us to see them.
