Women over 45 really hate this?!?!?
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mrtanner — 16 years ago(January 03, 2010 09:45 PM)
Just wanted to add my voice to the mix and say that I am a woman of 40 who thought this film was incredible.
I also don't think Mathilde was necessarily painted as a "villain". Even her comrades praised her bravery and dedication and seemed to understand why she did what she did. But by the same token, they had to do what they had to do. An awful situation all around. -
praxis1966-1 — 16 years ago(January 05, 2010 03:26 PM)
I have to agree with mrtanner. The whole point of this movie is to call into question the nature of good and evil, hero and villain. It's beauty is that it defies such simplistic analysis. As Melville was a former member of Cashiers du cinema and therefore a believer in the auteur theory of directing, it's not such a big leap to postulate that everything therein, including the film's muted blue and gray hue, is supposed to suggest that we're dealing with moral ambiguity. Hence why, despite their firm belief in the righteousness of their objective, there was still debate about Mathilde's execution. It's all very existentialist in it's moral relativism, which is why it's timeless; it goes directly to the core of post-modern angst.
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Kitzypoo — 16 years ago(January 24, 2010 10:13 PM)
I did wonder why she couldn't get hold of a razor blade or some way to commit suicide - but they said more than once that she couldn't, for some reasons I didn't understand fully.
By no means do I have any certain knowledge regarding the "right" answer, but the way I understood her situation is that a suicide would've likely been interpreted by the Germans simply as an attempt to escape, and hence the consequences would've been just as awful to her daughter. Whereas being assassinated by someone else, even willingly (to escape the moral dead end of having to sacrifice either the daughter or the resistance), would possibly be a whole another matter.
At the time of writing this, the rating by Females Aged 45+ has gone even lower, from 4.3 (according to the first post) to 2.9 (with 275 votes). I, too, found the slow pacing a bit demanding at times, even though someone like Tarkovsky is one of my absolute favourite directors, and certainly the film doesn't have many qualities that are conventionally thought to connect with women (romance, children, more personal or family relations, even the more abstract ethical and existential questions, and so on), but still that seems awfully low. Perhaps the tomentingly ambiguous, "back against the wall" sort of ethical and existential questions regarding warfare are just too foreign to them to raise much personal interest, beyond the black-and-white "home front sentiments" like "Say no to war" or "Just wipe out those filthy Whatnots and bring our boys back home" (neither of which are really viable options here)? Or maybe the whole film is just too bleak and fleshless? Whatever the reason(s), I, too, admit to being intrigued. -
max von meyerling — 16 years ago(February 23, 2010 02:49 PM)
How can someone get this far into an arcane discussion of a film and be surprised that a lot of the inner workings of the film have been revealed. I would think to participate, or even just observe, in such a discussion that one might first see the film.
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sillyhat — 14 years ago(April 25, 2011 02:19 PM)
Is Mathilde really the villain of the piece? I don't see the film as having any clearcut good or bad guys among the Resistance members - all are fighting for a just cause but all end up being compromised in some way. I see Mathilde more as a tragic figure faced with an impossible decision.
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J. Spurlin — 15 years ago(March 09, 2011 11:29 PM)
imdb.com/board/10064040/ratings
The ratings by women over 45 are phony. This seems to be a problem on a wide variety of non-U.S. classics. See a discussion about it on the Contributor board:
imdb.com/board/bd0000042/nest/164364008
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Justin