Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Bold and Uncompromising "Mother", October 12, 2006
I noticed recently that this title has gone out of print (as of 10/12/06), so I felt compelled to say a few words about what I feel is a very special film. I want to encourage anyone who has not seen it to grab a copy NOW while you still can, and I hope that a great designer label (perhaps Criterion) will pick it up and showcase it to a greater audience.
"The Mother" is a very adult tale and that's part of what makes it so special. Aside from the somewhat graphic, intergenerational sex scenes which are noteworthy enough--"The Mother" offers up one of the most complex and uncompromising character studies ever put on film. Anne Reid is flawless as the mother in question. Widowed, sixty-something and completely dissatisfied with life in general, she enters into an illicit affair with the friend of her son. She feels her life is empty, useless--and the affair is her one way to feel again, feel anything. Is it passion, love, degradation? In truth, it's a combination of all three and her only tangible way to grasp at the life she has become so disconnected with. The film never asks you to sympathize with her, it's a "warts and all" approach. Far from being a heroine, you will be left questioning her motivations, her incapacity to love, her familial loyalty. It's a brave, bold, and stunning portrait.
Every time you think you know where the story is headed, your expectations are thwarted. Like real life, things don't necessarily follow an inevitable logic nor do they resolve themselves tidily. Daniel Craig does solid work, as usual. But it's Reid's show. In a fierce performance, she lays body and soul naked--a performance that surely would have garnered an Oscar nomination if the film had a higher U.S. profile.
For those that lament the lack of ADULT, challenging films--this is a must see! I found myself rooting for these characters even though much of their behavior is destructive. I just find it refreshing when things don't have to be nice or happy or polite. That may be what is represented in most movies, but life is more complex than that! KGHarris, 10/06.
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17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"I don't want to grow old!", December 8, 2004
One of the first things that struck me about "the Mother" was how disaffected, distant, and unemotional she is. In fact, her entire family seems to be so totally self-absorbed, self-obsessed and overly materialistic that not one character is at all likable. Rather than appearing as a shining beacon of love and support to her children, May (a marvelous Anne Reid), comes across as more concerned about her own failings. While ready to listen on the surface, deep down she's a middle-class, snobby, and somewhat uncaring mother who probably loves her children when it's convenient for her, but has spent the majority of her life resenting her children for stifling her when she was younger. The sexy affair she embarks on with her daughter's boyfriend, without regard for her daughter's feelings, says a lot about the years of pent-up repression inside of her.
Astutely observing the intricacies and nuances of English domestic middle-class life, director Roger Michell, allows us to peek into the lives of the elderly May and Toots (Peter Vaughan) as they visit their grown children in London. They are a long-married and well-to-do couple. Bobby (Steven Mackintosh), their busy son has a glamorous life style, a thriving business, a new house, and a wife and two children. Paula (Cathryn Bradshaw), their daughter, is a single mother, a schoolteacher, and an unpublished writer. When Toots suddenly dies of a heart attack, May, in a fit of fear and loneliness, moves in with her children to escape the solitude of her house. Her arrival at Bobby's causes problems so May goes to stay with the busy Paula.
Going back and forth from Paula's flat to Bobby's house, May meets Darren (a gorgeously sexy Daniel Craig), Bobby's robust, muscle-laden best friend who is doing some building work on the house. After Paula asks her mother to find out whether Darren wants to marry her, May becomes friendly with Darren. They have lunch together and there's obviously a connection because May kisses Darren. Soon their friendship becomes physical and with Darren sexually thrilling her, they begin an incredibly hot affair. May is a frumpy grandmother in her sixties, while Darren is a bearded, virile man in his thirties.
All the characters in this film are absolutely mired in dysfunction. May is unhappy and alone, and she fears becoming old. Her children don't particularly like her, and Paula, especially, bitterly resents her; she thinks that May's been a lousy mother who never "encouraged" her. Paula is portrayed as neurotic, hysterical and cloying, and her obsession with Darren totally gets in the way of her ability to see that Darren is kind of useless and doesn't particularly love her. Darren is also haunted: he drinks too much, copes with an autistic son, and sleeps in his car. He's always poor and seeks solace from his problems in doing lines of coke. At first Darren is nice to May, and she offers to take him on as a type of sugar mother to him, but soon she begins to see his other side.
The Mother is a beautifully acted movie with Daniel Craig and Anne Reid giving astoundingly realistic performances. The sex scenes between them both are totally realistic and beautifully done, the connection between them being far more than just sex. Reid is especially good at portraying a complicated, middle-aged woman, who is actively seeking her own fulfillment and rediscovering parts of herself that have lain dormant for years. Craig is also great as her young, spunky suitor easily portraying a good man who seems to be very kind and understanding until May, unrealistically tries to push their relationship. The Mother is a quiet, complex and very adult film that analyses, with a type of subtle restraint, the deleterious effects of selfishness, egocentricity, and self-interest on families. Mike Leonard December 04.
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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Mom's Not Too Old nor Dead, and Not About to Pack It In, October 21, 2005
With the death of her infirmed husband, May, an older woman faces a future in an urban world that views her as invisible, dead from the neck down, and unwelcome in the pseudo- sophisticated yuppie homes of her son, Bobby and his shallow wife, Helen, and Paula, a self- absorbed, clinging, and minimally talented daughter. The central family is anything but warm, supportive, and understanding of her new and tragic stage in life with the death of her husband. The Mother is a quiet character study that points up how in some societies, the elder parent is both unwelcome and a burden to grown children whose careers and status seeking overshadow all else.
As May comes to realize the world is still important to her, the lonely widow finds her libido reawakened and alive with her daughter's boyfriend, a carpenter and rough sort. May embarks on an uninhibited sexual affair with Darren whose character is sympathetic to her at first, but his flawed nature is quickly revealed through the pressures of the women who surround him.
This is the kind of role Hollywood actresses of a certain age whine is never written for them, but they would never appear because of the frank and overt sexuality, unglamorous wardrobe, little makeup, and social commentary on the vapidness of the society most film industry women are involved. The performance by the lead actress, Anne Reid ranges from quiet to giddy and her interpretation blossoms on screen from the drab widow to a sexually alive and freed middle age woman without face-lift, hair extensions, and liposuction. She bares more than her soul for the screen.
Daniel Craig is the enabling handyman, Derrek who beds both mother and daughter. He turns in another stellar performance that is at first sympathetic to the widow's situation, but in the end is without redemption as his true nature unfold and he is literally the rooster in a hen-house. His aimless character's inability to say no to the ex-wife, boring girlfriend, and her mother is blamed as the root of his ineffectual existence. While good with his hands at building a conservatory, he is unable to construct meaning in his life.
One of the best films from Britain in years, it is simply adult in its storyline. The Mother is the rare kind of film that is perhaps too honest for American audiences to tolerate having no car chase, no bling, no rap soundtrack to drown out the cretin performances by TV starlets and buff studmuffins. The Mother reflects how the aging baby boomers are now disposable people that offspring are willing to overlook, send to the retirement home, and get out of the way. May doesn't know what to do as she is made alive by Darren, isn't willing to go to the old folks home, and finds her kids are more conservative than she ever was at their age.
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