Rita (Carrie Coon) lives with her husband Reuben (Coon’s real-life husband Tracy Letts) and their two daughters Jo (Odessa Young) and Ella (Bella Ramsey). There’s a deep unhappiness in her life. The mere mention of her past as a Holocaust survivor several decades after she escaped, is enough to make Rita break down completely. Her experience during the Holocaust is a trauma from which she has never recovered.
At her job, the extremely anxious Rita meets Ricki (Lily James), who takes an immediate liking to her. In Ricki, Rita sees a joy and ease that she’s desperate to have, so when Ricki asks to spend time with her and her friends, Rita cannot resist. Rita discovers that Ricki’s friends aren’t so much her friends, but her followers. Based on the story of Israeli director Guy Nattiv’s own grandmother, The Liberation is the story of a woman who succumbs to a cult that offers her the promise of the better life she’s so desperate to have.
Set in 1980s New Jersey, Nattiv’s exceptionally powerful and emotionally harrowing film (written by Nattiv and Noa Berman-Herzberg) jumps back and forth between two timelines. In one, we slowly piece together how Rita became entranced by Ricki. In the other, her daughters arrive at Ricki’s remote compound to reconnect with their mother, and more importantly, bring her back home.
In The Liberation, Coon delivers astonishing work, an extremely well-rounded portrait of a deeply troubled woman, so keen to find a sense of purpose in a world that’s taken everything from her that she’ll torment herself to achieve it. Her vulnerabilities are expertly exploited by Ricki, and the moments with her daughters at the compound, in which she claims to have never been happy while being visibly emaciated, are wrenching. Don’t be surprised to find Coon in the centre of the Oscar conversation this year.
While James’s performance is creepy and effective, what is missing from Ricki is interiority. There’s a sense of why Rita would devote herself so entirely to Ricki, but never a full understanding. We never learn how Ricki became the person she is, where she came from, or what the cult she’s created actually offers, beyond the vague promise of “clarity, honesty, and forgiveness”. And while we get so much of Coon’s character (and honestly, every scene without her misses her presence), the story would have been all the richer if we got to know some of the other women in Ricki’s cult.
The most haunting idea The Liberation presents is that while she does need to be freed from Ricki's group, the life she had before wasn’t the best place for her either. Through Coon’s utterly unforgettable performance comes the pervasive sense that there may not be any place for Rita to find true happiness at all. It’s a devastating thought, and one you’ll think about long after The Liberation ends.
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