Now Showing: The Ninth Hour

 

The Ninth Hour

Genre: Drama/Historical

Director: Reed Morano

Writer: Rosie JoLove

Based on the novel by Alice Dermott

Cast: Elisabeth Moss, Mackenzie Foy, Nicole Kidman, Mary-Louise Parker, Teresa Palmer, Constance Zimmer, Wes Bentley, Greg Kinnear, Judi Dench, Chris Gere, Joan Allen, Colin Hanks

Plot: Jim (Colin Hanks) asks his pregnant wife Annie (Elisabeth Moss) to do some shopping. He takes a massive couch to block his wife's entrance to the house. Then, he enters the kitchen to turn on the oven. Upon his wife's return, she asks a neighbor for help to get the door open. When they enter, Jim lights a match, setting off an explosion.

Police arrive along with Sister St. Saviour (Judi Dench) of a local convent. Jim's death is ruled a suicide. Sister St. Saviour comforts Annie. She learns that Annie purchased a Calvary plot, but because of the suicide, his body couldn't be interred in hallowed ground. Annie tells Sister St. Saviour that Jim had lost his job. Annie would stay with her sister in law. Sister contemplates Annie's house, particularly the disarray of junk in the courtyard and the fire's scent. For a moment, she thinks that she sees a man crawling or "cowering was the word, beneath the black tangle of junk and dead leaves." She thinks it's a persistent illusion sent to her by God, showing her Jim in purgatory.

Sister Lucy (Teresa Palmer) and Sister Jeanne (Nicole Kidman) help scrub the apartment clean and repair what they can. When Sister Jeanne returns to their convent, she tells Sister Illuminata (Mary-Louise Parker), the laundress, of Sister St. Saviour's request to have Annie's sheets laundered. Upon Sister Jeanne's return, the Sisters prepare the house for the wake immediately. Sister St. Saviour believes Annie may bury her husband in Calvary, although Sister Lucy protests that.

Sister St. Saviour organizes the mass for tomorrow morning. They call the suicide "these accidents with gas." During mass, Sister St. Saviour "considered the sin of her deception, slipping a suicide into the hallowed ground." "She wanted him buried in Calvary by the Church's power wanted him kept out, and she, who'd spent her life in the Church's service, wanted him in. Hold it against the good I've done".

That day, a New York Times article exposes the suicide with the headline "SUICIDE ENDANGERS OTHERS." Now that it's in the papers, a Catholic cemetery wouldn't accept his body. Sister St. Saviour proclaims that there'll be no mass. Sister Jeanne prepares Annie for what there's to come. Annie's daughter is born three weeks after Sister St. Saviour dies.

The sisters suggest that Annie live in Mrs. Tierney (Joan Allen) & Mr. Tierney's (Greg Kinnear) house. Annie and Sally visit the Little Nursing Sisters' convent every morning for some peace. St. Saviour, before dying, had arranged enough funds are secured to pay a salary for Annie. The Ladies of Auxiliary take care of impoverished young widows and other women. Every week, Annie helps the sisters clean, wash, and iron the convent linen. Sister Illuminata carves shapes of dogs and ducks out of soap for Sally (Mackenzie Foy) to play with. Sister Illuminata teaches Annie to clean precisely and fastidiously. At times, Sister Illuminata tells Annie about her mother before she died. Sister Illuminata's mother had been a laundress in Dublin but died when Sister Illuminata was twenty.

Annie regards the stories as a form of contraband since the Sisters aren't to talk about their past. One afternoon, when Sally's almost two, she begins to cry because she has something in her eye. Annie sees Sally's pressing the head of a carved duck to her eye. She tries to take the soap carving from her hand, but Sally clenches her fists, pulling away. Sister Illuminata remarks the girl will never be a pushover. Annie doesn't speak of Jim and won't reveal his grave's location to Sally.

Sister Illuminata resents Sister Jeanne's youth and skill taking care of young children. Sister Jeanne takes care of Sally while Annie's away. Sister Jeanne believes that all loss would be restored. She questions whether Jim's death could gain restitution. Sister Lucy returns to say she's smarter, and the nuns constitute her purgatory. Seeing that Sister Jeanne's taking care of Sally, Sister Lucy comments Sally's mother is too often there, and Sally cannot be a convent child. Sister Jeanne discovers that Sister Lucy's wrist had been broken that afternoon by a "man with the DTs" and argued with Sister Eugenia about going to the hospital. Sister Lucy tells Sister Jeanne to "take note" of Mr. Costello and Annie's interactions and "what their faces give away."

Mr. and Mrs. Costello (Wes Bentley & Constance Zimmer) are introduced. Mrs. Costello lost her leg to a stray dog, and infection set in. The nuns bathe and tend to her every morning, and Mr. Costello prepares her meals. Mr. Costello leaves to work at the dairy, delivering milk bottles.

Annie remembers praying for Jim, her unanswered prayers, that he'd get out of bed, go to work and return. He wouldn't talk to her about insults and lose contempt. She also worries that he'd murdered himself and murdered something in her as well.

One day, she sees Mr. Costello dripping in rainwater and invites him inside. They have a conversation, that same afternoon, they meet each other again outside a butcher shop. The talk and it feels delightful to Annie. They don't share tragic tales. One year later, Annie invites Mr. Costello to her room downstairs and hands him a key to her door. He visits her, asking whether they're alone.

Sally imitates Mrs. McShane, who works as an organizer for the nuns' societies and fundraisers. She also imitates Sister Illuminata's "old brogue" and her manner of speaking. Sister Illuminata notices that the child "was a born mimic." Sister Illuminata takes pleasure in realizing that as Sally grows older, she no longer wants to tag along with Sister Jeanne and thinks that she "might prefer a little devilment in her friends." When Sally's 13 years old, she asks Sister Illuminata to put on Sister Jeanne's full habit on her, although it d be considered sacrilege. As soon as she put on the pattern, she grew solemn and felt her body transform. Sister Illuminata feigns disapproval but admires the child's "bare beauty" and innocence. When Annie returns, Sister Illuminata jokes that "Sally's already gone." When Sally reveals herself, Sister Illuminata introduces her as "Sister St. Sally of the Smelly Socks". At this moment, Annie laments and asks Sally, "are you thinking already about how you'll leave me?".

Annie warns Sally that she'd have to move away if she were to become a nun. Meanwhile, Sally sets herself apart from the chaos of the Tierney household and children. Tom and Patrick (Chris Geere), Mrs. Tierney's sons, are awestruck by her transformation. Sister Illuminata says that Sally's "promised to Christ" full of admiration for her. Annie retorts, "what man accepts a promise from a girl so young?".

Sister Illuminata wonders if Sally's behavior is "mere mimicry." Still, she encourages her by saying that "Christ Himself had called her to become, in a ghastly world, the pure, clean antidote to filth, to pain." Sister Illuminata speaks of Sally's help in the laundry room, saying that "Down here, we do our best to transform what's ugly, soiled, stained, don't we? We send it back into the world like a resurrected soul. We're like the priest in his confessional, aren't we?". Sister Illuminata gives Sally the name "Mary Immaculate."

Annie contemplates Sally entering a convent. She thinks the Good Shepherd Sisters would have a place for her. Sally wears a cloak and black satchel and joins Sister Lucy on her day visiting homes. Sister Illuminata remarks that Sally's having a "baptism by fire."

Sally and Sister Lucy on their visit to Mrs. Costello's home. Sally notices Mrs. Costello's stump as Sister Lucy lifts her from the bed. They see bloodstains on her white sheets, and Sister Lucy asks Sally to clean the stains. Sister Lucy bathes a naked Mrs. Costello. Mrs. Costello cries, "I'm afraid, I'm afraid" as she's being bathed. Once fully immersed, she becomes quiet. Sally notices a pink stain of blood rise to the surface of the bathwater. Sally thinks of the word "brazen..."

Once the bath is done, Mrs. Costello says that her husband will carry her down to the park that evening. Sally braids her hair, and Mrs. Costello complains, "I have pain...I am abandoned and alone". She says that she lost her leg when she was bitten by a mad dog. She searched for a cruel man who tied his children to a post in an unknown yard to beat them. Mrs. Costello says she's frightened when Mr. Costello's gone, and Sally thinks her weeping's childish. When Sister Lucy returns to them, she undoes the braids in Mrs. Costello's hair, who calls it a "rat's nest." When they're about to leave, Mrs. Costello says she's afraid asking them not to go.

Sally thinks that she wants company, but Sister Lucy says Mrs. Costello's suffering from an imaginary pain and others with greater need. Sister Lucy says that "Any woman who wants an excuse to take to her bed will surely find one." She adds, "If the dog that bit her had been drowned as a pup, Mrs. Costello would have found an excuse." Sally came to know that Sister Lucy "lived with a small, tight knot of fury at the center of her chest." Sister Lucy tells the story of her mother's death when she was seven years old. Sister Lucy says, "Life itself is a bleak prospect to a motherless child."

Another day as they leave Mrs. Costello's apartment, Sister Lucy tells Sally, "A woman's life is a blood sacrifice." She adds, "poverty and men made a bad situation to be born female." They visit a pregnant woman in a tenement and notice that her baby has ringworm. Sister Lucy asks the woman, "Is your husband good to you?" and then tells Sally, "Even a good man will wear his wife thin...Even a good wife might transform herself into a witch or a lush or worse, an infant or an invalid, to keep her perfect husband out of bed." Sister Lucy thinks that Mr. Costello is the best of men and that his wife has the "pleasures of being sick." She instructs Sally to "never waste your sympathy" and "Never think for a minute that you will erase all suffering from the world with your charms." Sister Lucy believes that without suffering, there would be no peace in heaven.

On their way back to the convent, they come across a little girl Loretta, whose big sisters, Margaret and Tillie, couldn't take her to school because they weren't let out of their room. Sister Lucy asks to see the girls, and Loretta takes them to their place. The sisters are tied to the bedpost by tight belts, and their wrists and thighs have strap marks. The scent of urine is in the room. One of the sisters has a bruise on her neck. Sister Lucy complains, "another mother who went out to work." Loretta says that Charlie, their brother, is in charge whenever their mother goes away to work. Suddenly Charlie returns home, Sister Lucy confronts him, saying that he has "left welts on their flesh" and that she knows "what else you've done to these girls...Sinful". Charlie says that he's in charge, and Charlie remarks that his sisters are not obedient, like "this holy one," referring to Sally. Sister Lucy will call the police if it happens again, but Sister Lucy seems helpless and foolish to Sally.

Returning to the convent, Sister Lucy says, "If I were a man, I'd take a strap to him myself." When a priest visits them, Sister Lucy tells him about Charlie and asks him to pay them a visit that night, calling Charlie "A cruel and evil boy...Cool as a cucumber.". Sister Lucy says again, "If I were a man... I'd wipe the smile off his face," and that Sally standing by making eyes at him wasn't helping. Sister Lucy tells Annie that she doesn't think there's a vocation in Sally. She says, "Marriage might settle her. Not the convent," but Sister Illuminata retorts.

The Little Nursing Sisters' convent used to be a rich man's house and gave it to the sisters in reparation. Sister Jeanne converses with Annie mentioning St. Saviour's death and how the room where she died had roses. Then, Sister Jeanne suggests that Annie should let Sally go. Annie believes it'll break her heart if Sally leaves. Sister Jeanne long ago, saw Jim bowing his head toward her. She condoles Jim and says that the worst suffering for a soul is "to be trapped forever in these bodies of ours. No relief". Jeanne notes to Annie that there could be redemption and forgiveness during Sally's vacation. There could be forgiveness of sins if she were to become a nun. When Annie asks if Jim would be forgiven if Sally were a nun, Sister Jeanne clarifies that she's talking about Annie's sins and Annie's soul, not Jim.

Sally goes to leave for the convent in Chicago. She sits in a train car next to a woman and tries to be polite when she strikes up a conversation. Sally admits being a novitiate, and the woman talks about her life. The woman says that she runs away from her husband to live with her sister in Chicago. The woman says she's been married for six years to a man with the "tiniest penis known to man." She adds casually, "a girl the size of me spending her life riding a thing the size of that?". Sally struggles to continue being polite.

Eventually, Sally excuses herself to go to dinner service and sits next to a woman wearing second-hand clothes, trying to look put together. They strike a conversation. The girl says she's going to Chicago to meet her husband, that he'd been away for several months on a job and that she is lonesome for him. The girl pours some whiskey into Sally's tea to share.

The girl admits she doesn't know where he is and only has a hotel postcard to give her a clue. She's afraid he'll not be there when she arrives.

Sally leaves, and a man brushes up against her intentionally. Sally returns to her seat next to the dirty woman. The woman's asleep, and she needs to crawl on top of her and her bags since she won't wake up when she implores. The woman wakes up, startled. In an instant of fear and rage, Sally punches the woman's palms, her wrist, and her death, as if she were "pounding laundry." The woman's distraught and calls Sally a Devil. Upon Sally's arrival at the Chicago station, she ' greeted by an older and younger nun, who she regards as pure in appearance. She tells them she has "thought better of it."

Mr. Tierney and his son Patrick go to Mr. Tierney's father's funeral, the man who Patrick's named after. Mr. Tierney believes his father hated him and his wife. He didn't have a heart and even let his mother die without telling his son. Because Mrs. Tierney's an immigrant, Mr. Tierney's father hadn't approved of her. At the funeral, Mr. Tierney identifies Aunt Rose and Red Whelan. Red Whelan served in the Union Army, so his father didn't have to. Aunt Rose is Red Whelan's caretaker. Red Whelan was injured in the war; Patrick notices his singed flesh, an absent ear, and white only on one side. He walks with a crutch and is missing an arm and a leg. Patrick introduces himself and says that Red Whelan went to war instead of his grandfather. Red Whelan says nothing in return. On the train ride home, Mr. Tierney wonders if his father was irked that Red Whelan outlived him, he would've paid him to retake his death place.

After the war, Red Whelan had returned to Patrick Tierney's (Sr.) family and lived the rest of his life in the attic of their home. As a child, Aunt Rose took responsibility for him and for the rest of her life. The last time Mr. Tierney spoke to his father was when he told him that he'd marry Elizabeth Tierney. His father had been wasting Red Whelan's sacrifice and marry her so that "the fruit of his sacrifice can drag us back to the slums?". He adds they've forgiven one another if they spoke before he passed.

That night, Patrick imagined his own pale ghost in the window and wished his father had never mentioned exchanging one life for another, "one life to save your skin." He hears his father downstairs saying that he loved the man, his father. Mrs. Tierney says, "But love's a tonic, Michael. He was a bastard still". When Red Whelan dies, Aunt Rose comes to live with the Tierney's in their attic. Four months later, the Tierney's buy a larger home with their inheritance from Patrick Sr.'s death, where Sally and Annie stay.

In Sister Illuminata's past, when she tries to seek a brief reprieve in the solitude of a cottage nearby. She notices a man and a woman "pressed together in the corner of the hot room" and sees their naked bodies. Sister Illuminata turns away from them. The woman dies within a month.

In the present, Sister Illumination, the corner of talk about moving to a larger property. Sister Illuminata feels that she needs Annie's help in the laundry and gets too old to work independently. Sister Lucy suggests Annie should stay "whether she amends her life or no." While Annie is away, Sally visits the convent. The Sisters claim that her mother is in the shops. Sister Illuminata remembers and tells Sally, "there's a hunger," but Sally interprets it as "a hunger to comfort." Sister Illuminata asks Sally to give up in her mother's name, but Sally doesn't like nursing. Sister Illuminata says that she should perform "a kind of penance " to indulge her. For her soul". Sally works at the hotel's tearoom but thinks she'd visit Mrs. Costello and provide her company while Mr. Costello is away.

Sally goes to her job at the laundry at St. Francis Hotel. When she's done, she keeps Mrs. Costello company through her lonely hours. Sally knows that a "strange magnetism accounted for what went on between her mother and Mr. Costello in the bedroom that used to be her own." Sister Aquina visits Mrs. Costello one morning and asks Sally to prepare applesauce, smooth without the chinks and peels to avoid aspiration and choking. Sally takes one of Mrs. Costello's dolls in her hand but doesn't offer it sympathy because it looks too old for her to cherish. Mrs. Costello says they belonged to her mother. Sally's warned by the nuns that Mrs. Costello gets distracted easily. When Sally forces herself to be polite despite her resentment, she remembers that what the dirty woman on the train said of Sally: "butter wouldn't melt in her mouth." Mrs. Costello says her father would tie her to a chair after her mother died because she couldn't sit still. She says she has pain. Mrs. Costello says that when the milkman came to her house when she's a young woman, her father told him that he's welcome. She complains that she is "abandoned and alone."

Mrs. Costello asks to be taken to the toilet, and Sally helps her as she defecates. Sally wipes Mrs. Costello's bottom and feels disgusted. Mrs. Costello repeats the story of the dog attack that resulted in her losing her leg. Sometimes she changes the report, says that her husband took her to the hospital in a milk crate, which humiliated her. Mrs. Costello says that she and several others from her neighborhood had been looking for a man who had tied a child to a pole to beat him when she got bitten. When Mrs. Costello complains again that she is abandoned and alone, Sally has "a sudden impulse to stuff into the woman's mouth." When Sally leaves Mrs. Costello, she feels as if she deserts her. Upon her return to the hotel for her shift, she enters the kitchen, takes a bottle of ammonia, pours it into a stopped sink, and plunges her hands into it. She remembers that Sister Illuminata once saved a child who had ingested alum by inducing him to vomit. A girl comes to Sally and asks if the new rule is to clean their hands in ammonia, and Sally pretends that it is the case. Both girls bathe their hands in the ammonia.

Mrs. Tierney and Annie talk about Annie's "disdain for the society ladies who raised money for the nuns" and Mrs. Tierney's thoughts on priests as spoiled and "pampered mamas boys." Liz Tierney is bored by holiness and prefers business and chaos. She says, "isn't it funny how we all die at the same time? Always at the end of our lives. Why to worry?". Mrs. Tierney is pleased when Sally says that she'll no longer follow the sisters. She's also delighted when Annie tells her that Mr. Costello decided to amend his life, broke it off with Annie, and confessed. Annie says she will not reveal because there is nothing she is sorry for. Mrs. Tierney implies to Sally that she may want to move back in with her mother now since she is again "entirely alone."

Sister Lucy proclaims that Mrs. Costello will live, and Mr. Costello will amend his ways. She asks Sally to go to the kitchen and prepare Mrs. Costello some tea for pneumonia. When Sally goes into the kitchen to take a handful of alums wrapped in a violet handkerchief and deposits some in Mrs. Costello's tea. She hides the bitter taste with some whiskey that she finds in the cabinet. Sally's "plan was to exchange her own immortal soul for her mother's mortal happiness." Mrs. Costelle begins to sip the tea but then refuses.

Mrs. Costello has a stable coughing fit and panics. She is choking. Finally, Mrs. Costello dies. Sister Lucy and Sister Jeanne make preparations for her body and clean the apartment for Mr. Costello's arrival. As Sally cleans the teacup and the applesauce, she notices there are bits of peel in the applesauce. Sally begins to cry. Sister Jeanne tells Sally that she didn't harm "whatever you'd thought to do" and adds, "God is fair. He knows the truth". On her way back home, Sally feels that her mother and Mr. Costello are free to wed. When she returns home, Patrick's studying at a table, and they strike up a conversation. Sally mentions Mrs. Costello's death. They talk, and at that moment, they fall in love.

Sally narrates Annie and Mr. Costello's wedding. Annie gives birth to a daughter they name Grace. Once Grace goes off to school, Sally and Patrick get married.

Sally tells a story of years into the future. Patrick is very old and lives in a small apartment. Sally finds a newspaper headline that reads, "SUICIDE ENDANGERS OTHERS." Patrick says, "thank God your mother never knew." Sally silently notes how much went unspoken in those days. Patrick says that "the truth's out now." Sister Jeanne says to Sally that she lost her place in heaven a long time ago as a child. She ends by saying that "God has hidden these things from the wise and prudent, see? He's revealed them only to the little ones".