Diksha Sundriyal
Written and directed by Tyler Perry, Netflix’s ‘Straw’ is a tense drama that follows a devastating day in the life of a single mother with too much on her plate. Taraji P. Henson plays Janiyah Wiltkinson, who is working two jobs to support herself and her daughter, Aria, who has a medical condition for which she needs her meds, which are too expensive for Janiyah to afford on top of rent and every other bill that is past due. She has put her dream of going to nursing school on hold as she is entirely focused on her and Aria’s survival. However, one day, all hell breaks loose as she finds herself stuck in a series of consistently unfortunate events. As pressure mounts on her, the film takes shocking twists and turns, leaving the audience shocked by the end. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Straw Plot Synopsis
The movie begins with a tired Janiyah waking up to yet another challenging day in her life. She gets her daughter ready for school, which is when we discover that the girl is not well. She has seizures for which she takes meds. The day before, she had one while she was in the bath, due to which she took a fall that left bruises on her back. Now, her mother is afraid to leave her alone, even though Aria insists she can bathe herself. The girl also asks her mother for $40 because the day before, her teacher called her out for not bringing lunch money and eating a “special” meal, which is what she actually needs to eat because of her condition. Janiyah, who is late for work, promises to come by before lunch and give her the money.
Another person who instantly needs money from Janiyah is her landlady, who has already served her an eviction notice. She threatens to throw all of her stuff out if she doesn’t get her money. Janiyah promises her that once she gets her pay, she will find time around noon to come back and give her the money she owes. After dropping off her daughter at school, she goes to her job at the supermarket, where her boss is already angry at her for being late. His insensitivity is evident in their first interaction, and the only person who seems to care about her is her colleague.
Shortly after she punches in at work, Janiyah gets a call from her daughter’s school. She is asked to arrive there immediately. Her boss does not respond well to her leaving so suddenly, but he lets her go on the condition that she will be back within half an hour. Even though it is impossible for her to do that, she still decides to leave. Before that, she stops by the bank across the street where she tries to get $40 from her account, on the balance of $47. She is told that she cannot withdraw the money because she needs to maintain a minimum balance to do that.
The Progressively Worsening Day Leads Janiyah to Her Breaking Point
When Janiyah arrives at her daughter’s school, she discovers that the teacher has called social services, who take away her daughter, citing concerns over the fact that she is unable to care for her. Things get worse when she has a little accident where her car is hit by another car. Instead of accepting his mistake, the driver lashes out at her, and she is unable to do anything about it because he is a cop. Due to this, she receives a ticket and her car is impounded. This forces her to return to work two hours late, which gives her boss the excuse to fire her. When she asks to get her paycheque, he refuses to give it to her immediately and tells her to wait for it in the mail.
When Janiyah returns home, she discovers that the landlady has thrown all of her stuff out, including her daughter’s medicines and the science project she was building for school. A dejected Janiyah returns to work to ask for her cheque, but her boss still refuses to do it. In the midst of this, two men enter the scene, hold Janiyah and her boss at gunpoint, and try to rob the place. When they try to take Janiyah’s bag, which has her daughter’s stuff, including her science project, things happen such that she ends up shooting one of the robbers. The whole situation makes her boss angrier, and he lashes out at her, claiming that she was in on the robbery. He calls 911 and reports her, and she shuts him up by shooting him dead.
She walks out of the store with her cheque and goes to the bank across the street to cash it. When she is told that she cannot cash it without an ID, which she reveals was stolen, she uses the gun to scare the bank teller into giving her the money. The woman misreads it as a robbery and pushes the emergency button, which sends a message to the authorities that a robbery is in progress. By this time, Janiyah has already become a person of interest in the murder of her former boss, and with the robbery thrown into the mix, she is looking at a whole lot of trouble. And that’s not even the worst of it.
How and When Did Janiyah’s Daughter, Aria, Die?
Losing her daughter to social services, losing her job, losing her car, and not getting the paycheque that would have sustained her for another week or so is enough to break Janiyah. One would think that landing herself as a robber, holding a bank on gunpoint, while the cops outside look for any excuse to barge in and shoot her down is the worst thing that could happen to her. It couldn’t get any worse than this, right? But then, at the end of the day, it turns out that Janiyah has already been through the worst thing in her life: losing her daughter to death.
At the beginning of the film, it is mentioned that Aria had a seizure the previous night, which caused her to fall. What actually happened was that the seizure got so bad that she had to be rushed to the hospital. Janiyah herself took her there, and she came out of the hospital with the dead body of her daughter. The doctors couldn’t give her the help she needed, and they couldn’t do anything to save her. It wasn’t that Janiyah had never had progressively bad days before. It was just that even in the worst of times, she had her daughter to think about, and that gave her the strength to keep pushing. So, when she loses her daughter, her brain is unable to handle this grief.
When she wakes up the next morning, she completely blocks the memory of her daughter’s death and goes about her day as if Aria is still there and it is just another normal day for them. This means that the Aria that we see from the first shot of the film is not real. She is a hallucination concocted by Janiyah’s mind as a survival instinct, because that is the only thing keeping her sanity intact and preventing her from falling apart. Still, the grief is weighing heavily on her mind and body, and as the day gets worse with each step, she eventually snaps at the bank, leading to the events she never saw coming. It is when she gets a call from her mother that she is reminded of Aria’s passing, and the weight of the whole thing comes crashing down on her.
Does Janiyah Die?
It would be an understatement to say that it was the worst day of Janiyah’s life. Believing that her daughter was still alive was the only thing keeping her from falling apart, but when she is reminded of that tragedy, she can think of nothing but dying. She imagines the cops crashing through the doors of the bank with their guns and shooting her down, putting her out of her misery. And it might have ended this way for her if it weren’t for Detective Kay Raymond who remained sympathetic for her from the beginning to the end.
When everyone was ready to dismiss her as yet another criminal, she stood her ground for Janiyah and actually tried to help her. When she discovered that Janiyah was scared to surrender because of a cop who had threatened her earlier that day, she took care of the problem. When the FBI takes over and refuses to let the situation defuse, she walks up to the bank’s door to show Janiyah that someone actually cares about her survival. Had she received more of this solidarity earlier, she might have had the mental and emotional capacity to process her daughter’s death rather than have her whole life come crashing down on her.
As she imagines being shot to death and being done with it, another person reminds her that she is not alone. Nicole, the bank manager, who also showed great empathy towards Janiyah from the beginning, refuses to leave her side. The deal was for the cop to be removed from the premises in exchange for letting all the hostages go. While everyone else leaves as soon as the opportunity arrives, Nicole stays behind to ensure Janiyah is alright. She keeps the woman from breaking down further and helps her surrender without any more trouble. With this, a very difficult and traumatising day comes to an end for all parties involved, but especially for Janiyah.
Will Janiyah Go to Prison?
With her boss’ murder and holding a bank hostage, it is clear that Janiyah is looking at jail time. In any other case, she would go to prison for life, but this whole case falls under extenuating circumstances. There is enough evidence to suggest that Janiyah was not in her right mind since the beginning of the day, and several people can attest to that. The part about her boss’ death will make things tricky for her, but the defense will still have the argument of her mental instability and the sudden robbery working in her favor. When it comes to robbing the bank, it won’t be difficult to prove that this was never her intention.
All she wanted, even as she waved around a gun, was to cash her cheque of around five hundred dollars. If it was about money, she could have taken all the money from her boss’ place as it was right there on the table. But all she took was her paycheck. In the same vein, she could also have taken the cash when the scared bank teller put it in front of her, but she chided the woman for that and clarified that all she wanted was to cash her cheque, nothing more, nothing less.
This leaves the part about holding people hostage, and with the sympathy that she gains from most of her hostages, there is a good chance that some or all of them might testify in her favor. Even the cops saw how easily she let people walk out, and how she tried to make people comfortable by giving them chairs. When she discovered that the old lady was diabetic, she didn’t think twice before letting her leave and profusely apologized for putting her in that situation. The prosecution could try to use the bomb thing against her, but then, there never really was a bomb. It was just her daughter’s science project, a fact that would also turn things in her favor.
At the end of the day, it won’t be difficult to prove that all the things that happened that day were completely out of character for Janiyah, who was broken down by the pressure of surviving in a world where nothing seems to be working for her, while dealing with the loss of her daughter. Considering everything, she might get a reduced sentence or be transferred to a psychiatric facility instead of prison, where she can receive the much-needed mental health care that she needs and deserves. Hopefully, this will help her heal, get a break from everything, and look forward to a better future.
