Motherhood
I had a little trouble pigeonholing Motherhood throughout the film, only as it never really falls into “romantic comedy” enough in either department. The title would suggest that this is a film for thritysomething women everywhere with kids, as something they can relate to. For those little moments of clarity all mothers have but really most often fail to make a note of. However, when they see it on the screen in front of them, it raises a wry, knowing smile or even better, an actual chuckle.
There aren’t many laughs to be had here though and whilst it is no less entertaining for this fact, it may well not be what you expect to see when you’re on the way to the cinema. Movie posters can often be misleading and Motherhood’s suggest something funny, comedic and even farcical . What is actually on offer here from Katherine Dieckmann and Uma Thurman is something much darker, and for those that Dieckmann is aiming at, a whole lot more realistic.
Thurman plays Eliza, mother of two living in an apartment in Manhattan with her husband, played mostly inconsequentially by ER’s Anthony Edwards and friended by only Sheila, played by Minnie Driver. A prodigal writer in her youth for her ‘lyrical’ work, Eliza has now forgone her creative passions in favour of bringing up her children to more cost that at first would seem apparent to her or the viewers watching.
As Eliza’s day passes in a whirlwind of shopping for goody bags, birthday cakes with names spelt correctly and parking in more and more unfeasibly difficult spots you do certainly feel for her. You also have to remember that this is a particularly busy day. The more cynical amongst us may even be forced to ask why she didn’t just plan this more in advance? Why leave everything to the last minute? Well, this would make the day less busy and the message less amplified.
The performance from Thurman is pretty good, all told. She is suitably worn out, even on getting up in the morning of the day in question and spends the rest of it largely aggravated, stressed, furious, lost and unfulfilled in equal measure. As an example of a woman on the edge sanity due to the constraints placed upon here by others, and a need to help that stops her from saying no, she is certainly hitting the right marks, but if anything, is more dishevelled and troubled than she needs to be, making the women in the audience no doubt feel better about being in the same situation as they invariably handle these problems much better than she does. So perhaps the film achieves cathartic release for some, at least.
Not a waste of ninety minutes at all, but the picture fails to really deliver any new insights into a subject that has been raised often cinematically, and maybe even lacks a little common sense in its story-telling.
Motherhood is released in the UK on March 12th 2010
The rewarding, tiresome emotional baggage that being a mother to two children entails is physically draining every day to Eliza and her sense of self is slowly being eaten away over the years of being, at best, only the third most important person in her own life.
The movie concentrates itself with a single day in Eliza’s life, but nonetheless a very busy one. The messages sent from Dieckmann here are quite obvious as it is, but are only emphasised by the choice of day we are afforded. Today is the day before Eliza’s daughters’ sixth birthday and the same day that she is having a birthday party in their apartment.
As a piece of social comment, Dieckmann’s message of overwhelmed, disenchanted women everywhere not having lives of their own because they have chosen to be mothers and then psychologically complain about the fact that they have no life of their own to speak of is an obvious and largely unoriginal one, though some of the approaches and ideas Dieckmann has are indeed thought provoking, if maybe not altogether intentional.
On the back of a truck travelling to New Jersey through the tunnel, it shows an advert for the ‘State Fair’. Depending upon your proclivity the message could easily be read more than one way and mean something entirely different. Given the blog Eliza writes everyday and her unrealised needs in her own life, this could easily be a statement of intent that seems to have passed her by.
