If a recent attempt to rework a Shakespeare play for the modern stage fell short, it’s hard to imagine Hollywood succeeding at turning the life of a deeply religious author of challenging fiction into a movie. But Christopher Scalia believes that a new film about the great southern author Flannery O’Connor does just that. The director and co-writer, Ethan Hawke, manages to depict O’Connor’s life while weaving in scenes from her stories and novels:

O’Connor created some of the greatest short stories written in English, in addition to two novels and countless letters that reveal the depth of her faith, the superiority of her craft, and the bite of her wit.

Hawke’s film, Wildcat, is marvelous, and he proves himself a worthy steward of O’Connor’s work and legacy. This film will thrill her readers and attract new ones.

One of the film’s strengths is that it consistently presents O’Connor’s faith on her own terms, including moments of doubt and struggle, in part by incorporating passages from her letters and the prayer journal she kept. . . . “Please help me get down under things and find where You are,” we hear her pray.

O’Connor’s gritty fiction bristles with off-putting characters and sudden, often violent depictions of the workings of divine grace. As she put it, “My own feeling is that writers who see by the light of their Christian faith will have, in these times, the sharpest eyes for the grotesque, for the perverse, and for the unacceptable.” Wildcat’s mini-adaptations capture what she elsewhere called “distortion . . . that reveals,” the downright strangeness of the stories.

Yesterday, the Iranian foreign minister flew to Geneva to meet with European diplomats. President Trump, meanwhile, indicated that cease-fire negotiations might soon begin with Iran, which would presumably involve Tehran agreeing to make concessions regarding its nuclear program, while Washington pressures Israel to halt its military activities. According to Israeli media, Iran already began putting out feelers to the U.S. earlier this week. Aviram Bellaishe considers the purpose of these overtures:

The regime’s request to return to negotiations stems from the principle of deception and delay that has guided it for decades. Iran wants to extricate itself from a situation of total destruction of its nuclear facilities. It understands that to save the nuclear program, it must stop at a point that would allow it to return to it in the shortest possible time. So long as the negotiation process leads to halting strikes on its military capabilities and preventing the destruction of the nuclear program, and enables the transfer of enriched uranium to a safe location, it can simultaneously create the two tracks in which it specializes—a false facade of negotiations alongside a hidden nuclear race.