Words by George Shaw
Paper Moon opens with a funeral. At her graveside, young Addie Loggins grieves the death of her mother. We hear the strains of the hymn Rock of Ages, as, off in the distance, conman, and one time acquaintance of Addie’s now deceased mother, Moses Pray sputters and spurts onto the scene.
Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
let me hide myself in thee;
let the water and the blood,
from thy wounded side which flowed,
be of sin the double cure;
save from wrath and make me pure.
The vivid imagery within these words echo throughout the film, but it’s at this point the precocious Loggins first spots an opportunity to go on and forge an unlikely partnership.
The conceit that throws these two together is one full of sadness and despair, and one that speaks heavily to the period in which Paper Moon is set. However, it is one that also begins their journey of grifting their way across the Great Depression-era USA.
At first it may seem hard to imagine how so much humour could be extracted from this voyage through the abject poverty and desperation of mid-western 1930’s America.
However, Paper Moon artfully balances those harsh realities, with a graceful and kind sweetness, that never ventures to overly saccharine territory, or ever feels the need to manipulate you into feeling.
Instead, driven by the charismatic real life father-daughter duo Ryan and Tatum O’Neal, and combined with Peter Bogdanovich’s loving and pitch perfect recreation of the time period, Paper Moon emerges as a deft, subversive and delightful road comedy that exudes a glowing monochrome warmth, full of heart and as charming as it is anarchic.
For me, the crux of the film, and the true beauty there within, lies in the importance of connections – like the one we see develop between Addie and Moses – and how these bonds can become your rock, your shelter from the guilt and the sin and can enable us to find faith in someone who believes in you, and how that belief can help you look toward the promise and hope of better and brighter days.
Fitting then, that the song that opens the film and shares its title should contain the entirely pertinent and beautifully bittersweet refrain;
“it wouldn’t be make-believe, if you believed in me.”