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Alexander Payne’s Feature Directorial Debut Was This Funny, Scathing Political Commentary Starring Laura Dern and Burt Reynolds Find help us

Before he became the cinematic voice of the curmudgeon experiencing a midlife crisis, Alexander Payne was one of the most scathing and insightful satirists working behind the page and the camera. With his impeccable tonal balance between pitch-black comedy, tender appreciation of the open world, and poignant reflection on fleeting relationships and aging, Payne excels at crafting middle-brow dramedies with an artful and sophisticated touch. Few directors are as in touch with humanity’s most insecure and desperate emotional dispositions, as seen in About Schmidt, Sideways, and The Holdovers.

As a filmmaker committed to dissecting the desires and motivations of characters who display selfish, unpleasant, and unseemly behavior, Payne is more than well-equipped to satirize the ineptitude of humanity when dealing with pressing issues. His debut feature, Citizen Ruth, juxtaposes the life of a seemingly no-good misfit against the ridiculous but frighteningly consequential abortion debate that has unfortunately only become more timely with age.

Alexander Payne Satirizes the Abortion Debate in ‘Citizen Ruth’

Image via Miramax

Regarding the satirical films of Alexander Payne, Election remains the gold standard. The film, disguised as a typical ’90s high school comedy, is perhaps the most unflinchingly brutal and all-encompassing takedown of American politics, and is allegorically told through a trivial student body election. With Citizen Ruth, starring Laura Dern as the titular character, Payne dives into the thorny debate of reproductive rights by attacking the theatrics of the debate itself. When Ruth Stoops, an irresponsible, impoverished, and drug-addicted young woman, learns that she is pregnant, she becomes the face of the ongoing abortion dispute among the people of Nebraska (Payne’s favorite location). Ruth is swayed to follow through with her pregnancy by an Evangelical couple, Norm and Gail Stoney (Kurtwood Smith and Mary Kay Place), while receiving the contrary from reproductive rights activist Diane Siegler (Swoosie Kurtz).

What separates Payne’s satirical chops from the pack is his genuine effort to understand how his characters operate on a day-to-day basis in their respective worlds and unlock their hidden decency. While he doesn’t try to proclaim that Ruth is secretly an angel unfairly regarded by society, as her heedless approach to life is largely responsible for her downtrodden state, punching down on someone as low-level as her offers nothing of substance. By criticizing the external forces surrounding Ruth — the Christian moralists and abortion rights activists — Payne casts a wider net to explore how political discourse alienates those who are most affected by the respective issue being argued for or against. Late in the film, Payne calls in the service of a Hollywood legend, Burt Reynolds, who plays the influential evangelist, Blaine Gibbons. This glorified cameo indicates that he will inspire Ruth to stand for a cause, but he only proves to be just as camera-hungry and blinded by ideology as the rest of the community.

Alexander Payne Criticizes Fanaticism and Political Theater in ‘Citizen Ruth’

Unlike the character the film’s namesake is riffing on, Charles Foster Kane of Citizen Kane, Ruth shows no interest in being a media darling or a mascot for either the pro-life or pro-choice movement. It would’ve been easy for him to valorize Ruth as a righteous social justice warrior, picking a side after wrestling with her conscience, but Payne courageously shows our agnostic protagonist disregarding any principles in the end. We should be appalled by Ruth indulging in debauchery, but her drug use works as a perverse source of catharsis amid the stress of the media frenzy. In these moments, she is autonomous and walking down her own path, for better or worse.

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Like most of us would do, Ruth is drawn toward accepting a bag of cash rather than joining a side and validating a cause. In a typically acerbic Payne touch, the film ends with Ruth, whose miscarriage terminated her pregnancy, running off with a bag of money promised by a pro-choice activist, as the rowdy picketers continue to scream and jeer at each other, oblivious to the central figure of this controversy running off into the sunset. Today, with the protection of reproductive rights in jeopardy, it’s easier than ever to get worked up by the theatricality of debate, but it will always undermine the greater cause.

These people never cared about Ruth Stoops as a human being — only as a disposable symbol for political propaganda. This final moment when Ruth expresses tremendous relief is played with reverence towards this disreputable figure. Despite her reckless behavior, she seems to have all the integrity in the world compared to the sensationalist hand-wringing of the raucous demonstrators. “People become fanatics for highly personal reasons…it’s more about them and their own psychosis than about that cause,” Alexander Payne said in 1997. In Citizen Ruth, the writer-director combines sardonic satire with intimate character drama, lambasting the theatricality of politics while showing earnest affection for this unorthodox protagonist. While the film concludes with Ruth continuing the next phase of her life, the protesters remain stagnant, screaming at each other without accomplishing a thing.

Citizen Ruth is available to watch on Paramount+ in the U.S.

Watch on Paramount+

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Citizen Ruth

Release Date

November 21, 1996

Runtime

104 minutes

Writers

Alexander Payne

Producers

Cary Woods


Cast

  • Cast Placeholder Image
  • Cast Placeholder Image

    Swoosie Kurtz

    Diane Siegler

  • Cast Placeholder Image

    Kurtwood Smith

    Norm Stoney



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