Four stars. Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity and brief sexuality
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.14.17
Film, despite the potential of
its myriad elements, rarely delivers the intensity of a powerful stage
performance.
 |
| Everett (Ethan Hawke) can't understand why Maudie (Sally Hawkins) puts so much painstaking — and painful — effort into her delicate watercolor paintings. As far as he's concerned, they only interfere with her primary purpose: to feed him on time. |
There’s something electrifying
about being in the presence of a truly charismatic actor: one who slides wholly
into a role with an authoritative snap that crushes any thought of looking
elsewhere. Every move, gesture and sentence are riveting; we’re simply spellbound.
You don’t very often get that
from a film performance.
Here’s one.
Sally Hawkins’ title role in Maudie is the stuff of cinematic legend:
not merely a role that should bring her an Academy Award, but one destined to
be remembered for a long, long time. It’s a delicately crafted, sensitively
delivered characterization that transcends the term “acting,” and becomes
something truly wondrous.
That said, this Canadian/Irish
co-production doesn’t make it easy on Stateside viewers unfamiliar with Maud
Lewis, a humble 20th century Nova Scotia woman who — unexpectedly,
astonishingly — became one of Canada’s most famous folk artists. Director
Aisling Walsh and scripter Sherry White dump us — without title credits,
preamble or any sort of back-story — into the drab, day-to-day frustration of
Maudie’s thirtysomething routine.
It’s the mid-1930s. Maudie lives
with her Aunt Ida (Gabrielle Rose) in the tiny community of Digby: a “kept” existence
arranged by her condescending brother Charles (Zachary Bennett), her only
sibling. He calls her “Sister,” unwilling to grant her even the small dignity
of her own name. Both their parents are dead; Charles arrives one morning to
inform Maudie that he has sold the family home — without bothering to consult
her — to settle outstanding debts.
He dumps her meager belongings,
including a set of paintbrushes, and departs. Hastily.
He’s ashamed and embarrassed by
her, and believes that she cannot care for herself. Maudie suffers the
debilitating after-effects of childhood rheumatoid arthritis, which has left
her body wracked with pain and twisted at odd angles.
Hawkins’ depiction of this is
both breathtaking and agonizing. She always stands tilted, eternally
shuddering, both feet never pressed flat on a floor at the same time. She’s
distressingly thin, her matchstick legs plunked into shoes several sizes too
large; it feels like she’d blow over in a stiff breeze.
(I’ve no idea how Hawkins
achieved this emaciated look. It’s beyond persuasive.)
Her face is pinched; her hands
are gnarled, her fingers extended at odd angles, fluttering like moths. Her
head, bobbing like a quail, tilts up from beneath hunched shoulders and back.
Even talking seems a struggle, her terse comments, responses and acknowledgments
barely a whisper. She talks to herself in a stream-of-consciousness manner,
giving voice to random thoughts.
But everything else is offset by
her eyes — which sparkle — and her quick, beaming smiles. She’s not
quick-witted, per se, likely having
enjoyed little formal education ... but she is alert and spunky. One imagines
that she doesn’t miss much.
She attends a local dance one
evening, forlornly nursing a beer in a corner, ignored by everybody. We ache
for her loneliness and isolation, Hawkins’ face a blend of stubborn
determination — after all, she worked up the courage to show up — and misery.
It’s subsequently ironic that the
woman whose brother has consigned to the care of a stern aunt, answers a
hand-printed request for a housekeeper, displayed at the town’s lone general
store. The notice is posted by Everett Lewis (Ethan Hawke), a taciturn,
40-year-old misanthrope who ekes out a marginal living as a fish seller.
He’s tall, hulking and shabby, as
damaged — in his own way — as Maudie: emotionally stunted, quick-tempered and
mistrustful. He lives in a 10-by-12-foot house in Marshaltown, a few miles from
Digby. The place has neither electricity nor running water; a bed loft hovers
above the single room. But he owns
the ramshackle house: It’s his. He’s
proudly self-sufficient, working long, grueling hours, and he wants a woman to
clean the place and fix his meals.
Maudie takes the job, knowing not
the slightest thing about cooking or cleaning. To her, this is an opportunity
for escape, to establish her own sense of worth. Despite the fact that Everett,
not knowing any better, treats her abominably.
“There’s me,” he thunders, at one
points, “and there’s the dogs, and the chickens. And then there’s you.” And he
means it.
His barrage of casual cruelty,
both verbal and physical, is heartbreaking; we gasp in anguish. Walsh’s tone
and approach are unrelentingly grim; her film is profoundly difficult to watch
and endure. We’re talking bleakness and despair on par with 1980’s Elephant Man.
And yet ... and yet...
Everett isn’t evil; he simply
doesn’t know any better. But he learns from Maudie’s persistence, patience and forbearance
(although, God knows, it feels like this transition takes forever). The dynamic shifts over time, and if he initially grants her
only the rough consideration he’d show for one of his dogs, this eventually
blossoms into something more.
When, at long last, she has
legitimate cause to observe, “We’re like a pair of odd socks,” we smile with
her.
Along the way, Maudie has been
covering the shack’s walls — and odd bits of wood and cardboard — with painted
flowers, birds, cats and outdoor scenes. These are noticed by Sandra (Kari
Matchett, in a radiantly warm performance), a transplanted New York society woman
who visits one day, to complain that Everett neglected her most recent fish
order. Sandra compliments Maudie’s craft; she buys small pieces and soon
commissions an original work, for a breathtaking $5.
White’s script is frequently
clumsy with transitions; Maudie’s random wall art blossoms into greetings cards
with jarring abruptness. (In point of fact, Maudie’s mother taught her, years
earlier, to make watercolor Christmas cards: a rather important detail that White
doesn’t bother to share.)
When not painting or keeping
house, Maudie accompanies Everett on his rounds, her cards gaining notice and
eventually being sold in the local general store.
Although not in Hawkins’ acting
stratosphere, Hawke holds his own; his take on Everett is thoroughly convincing.
He often pauses before responding, as if assembling every individual word in
sequence, before trusting himself with a finished sentence. He clearly doesn’t
know what to make of Maudie, who wildly defies his few expectations, even
standing up to his tantrums.
Hawke’s abrupt flashes of
irritation and anger are flat-out scary, and this isn’t the sort of
sugar-coated narrative that turns Everett into a sweet-natured softie in time
for the third act. Walsh guides Hawke into a much subtler transition that
remains prickly throughout, with grudgingly considerate acts emerging more in
deed than word.
A telling page is turned when,
instead of forcing Maudie to hobble alongside, as he pushes his fish cart along
the miles of barren road that separate his customers, he allows her to sit on
the cart.
Although this relationship
dynamic is wholly credible, one can’t help wondering why White’s depiction of
Everett is so unrelentingly harsh. It feels unfair and needlessly manipulative;
brief research suggests that it’s also untrue. This film depicts Everett as
being initially disinterested in, and eventually threatened by, Maudie’s
artistic talent; we’re led to believe that she’s “discovered” solely through
her budding friendship with Sandra, as a sort of unspoken patron.
This conflicts with a historical
record that suggests Everett was a strongly encouraging force in her life.
Apparently that didn’t suit White’s own artistic vision.
The film also is sloppy with
respect to the passage of time. The story takes us from Maudie’s entry into
Everett’s life, to her death ... in July 1970. But there’s no sense that we’ve
progressed any further than, say, the mid-1950s (although I grant that social
advances would have been delayed in so isolated a setting). At most, it feels
like we’ve spent 10 or 15 years with these characters: certainly not 35!
This could be deliberate —
Walsh’s attempt to present Maudie’s life as a series of snapshots, akin to her
paintings — but it still feels awkward and unsatisfying.
The technical credits are unadorned
but effective. Cinematographer Guy Godfree captures both the cramped confines
of the house — we sense the dust that must have settled on everything, at all
times — and the desolate, unforgiving landscape that surrounds this home. He
favors a long shot that depicts Maudie’s slow, painful progress each time she
walks along what looks like a levee road to Digby.
The spare soundtrack comes from
Michael Timmins, co-founder of Canada’s beloved blues/alt country/folk rock
band Cowboy Junkies. His delicate underscore is almost entirely solo guitar,
precisely applied to enhance moments both tender and tragic.
The film concludes with a brief
archival clip of the actual Maudie and Everett (the latter beaming cheerfully
in a manner that Hawke never comes close
to suggesting). The closing credits unspool to Irish singer/songwriter Lisa
Hannigan’s “Little Bird”: a tender coda to a impressive drama with strong
echoes of 1989’s “My Left Foot.”
Narrative
flaws notwithstanding, Hawkins — so memorable in Made in Dagenham and Blue Jasmine — makes Maudie both compelling
and unforgettable.
No comments:
Post a Comment