When a modern woman with a big belly, she must be delivered by her wife at home, but due to unknown reasons, her baby died soon after her birth. Should this pregnant woman be criticized or sympathized? When many viewers in China watch "Fragments of Women", the biggest controversy and emotional points are basically concentrated on this.
But in fact, when the director Kenel Mudluzzo was shooting this film, he did not intend to explore the ethical faults of the heroine, but from such a tragic incident that she extended her identity anxiety and personality independence as a woman. Series of questions.
The heroine Martha works in a large company, dressed well and talking elegantly. Although my mother had an inhuman experience in a concentration camp during World War II, she now lives in a rich and prosperous life. Martha’s husband, Sean, is a blue-collar worker on a bridge construction site. He has a sturdy beard and a grumpy and tough temper. He is dissatisfied with the arrogant mother-in-law. Fortunately, he is compliant with Martha. .
At this time, Martha and Sean are facing a major event in their lives: their daughter is about to be born. However, Martha chose a different delivery method from most pregnant women and did not receive thoughtful and safe delivery in the hospital; instead, she made an appointment with a midwife (midwife) in advance, and the midwife delivered the baby directly at home on the day of delivery.
Different delivery methods from others naturally hide uncertain risk factors. On the day of delivery, when Martha's amniotic fluid broke, Sean immediately contacted the midwife Barbara. Unfortunately, the latter is helping other pregnant women deliver their babies, so they can only entrust another midwife, Woodward, to do the work.
At first, Woodward checked the fetus's heart rate and asserted that everything was normal. So Martha was then arranged to start childbirth. However, in subsequent heart rate tests, Woodward found that the situation was not quite right, so he asked Sean to contact the hospital immediately.
However, Woodward, the midwife, did not interrupt Martha's delivery, but encouraged her to continue to work hard, trying to make the last effort to give birth to the fetus smoothly. Thanks to Martha's efforts, her daughter was finally born. I thought the danger would stop there, but the baby's skin gradually turned purple and he lost his breath.
When the ambulance arrived at the door of the house, it had already missed the rescue opportunity. Since then, the film will gradually unfold in Martha's long spiritual recovery. Nearly a month later, Martha wore a woolen coat and stepped on high heels, and went to work in the company seemingly casually.
Regarding the midwife's misjudgment, which led to the death of her daughter, she was not in the mood to pursue her criminal responsibility, but donated her daughter's body to scientific research institutions for research. For all this, husband Sean, and Martha's mother strongly opposed.
From her mother's point of view, Martha must sue Woodward and vent all her anger and sadness over the loss of her child to the negligent midwife. Similarly, for Sean, he could not accept that his wife was the object of anatomy under a scalpel, and he could not bear the result of not being buried properly.
In the eyes of everyone, Martha seemed to go her own way, turning a deaf ear to the advice of Sean and her mother; even because of her seemingly "cold" attitude, she did not cater to Sean's sexual desire; coupled with her mother's help, she eventually parted ways with her husband.
At the end of the film, Martha still went to the court accusing Woodward as a witness. Will she testify against Woodward in court and send him to prison and demand huge compensation? Or is there a completely different choice?
In fact, Martha's attitude towards Woodward is not the focus of this film, and whether Woodward is the culprit of the baby's death is not the key. In fact, the most common episodes presented in Fragments of a Woman are the contradictions, differences and resistances between Martha and everything around her.
Especially after the baby's death, this strange discomfort becomes more and more obvious. For example, when she returned to the company for the first time after childbirth, all of her colleagues looked down on her, a strange way of seeing a monster. The most obvious is that the little black brother sitting at her desk, when facing Martha to make her take her place, he seemed to see a ghost.
Or when Masha was shopping in the supermarket, she met a strange old lady who claimed to be her mother’s brand friend. Mourn.
Among them, the most excessive is all kinds of interference from the mother. Martha originally hoped to donate her daughter's body to a scientific research institution for research, but she also chose to settle the matter of midwives. But the mother always forced Martha to go to court without any explanation, and turned the pain in her heart with anger and justice; similarly, the mother and Martha's husband forced Martha to let her daughter's body be buried in the soil.
Because in her mother's view, suffering and pain must be completely turned over with blood, tears and a hard-line attitude. She specifically cited "the efforts her mother made to bear and support herself during World War II" to Martha.
And here, the mother accidentally said that if Martha had been waiting for delivery in the hospital according to her intentions, such a tragedy would not have occurred. It is not difficult to see what the root of Martha's resistance was.
If and when we carefully analyze the differences between Sean and Martha, and why Martha chose Sean as her husband, we may have a clearer understanding of this question. Sean obviously has a very obvious tendency to violence. To treat his brother-in-law Chris, he would slam the door of the car with his fists to express shock; when consulting the doctor about the cause of his daughter's death, he was even more swearing, and he could not restrain his irritability in the slightest.
One of the most representative moments is when he semi-compulsively asked Martha to have sex with him when he was emotionally unstable, and even rudely tore Martha's underwear. When Martha resisted a bit and planned to take off her clothes on her own, he immediately ran away in anger.
Although the marriage of Sean and Martha is described as inequality between classes, or a stain on the purity of love. However, when we see so much about Sean’s unprovoked and uncontrollable character, it’s hard not to make people wonder what Martha’s love for him is?
In fact, at the beginning of the film, it is not difficult to see the reason from the words and deeds of Sean when facing his mother-in-law to buy a car for his family. Although Sean accepted it, he cursed and criticized his mother-in-law, but Martha was not at all dissatisfied or embarrassed.
Therefore, the most fundamental contradiction in Fragment of a Woman does not occur between Martha and Sean, nor between Martha and Woodward, but focuses on between Martha and her mother. Martha chooses a rude and low-level man to be her husband, so that her mother will be irritated repeatedly; and she chooses to be free to give birth at home during the most important moment of her life, which may be a resistance to her mother.
Therefore, at the beginning of the film, director Mudluzzo used that fascinating 23-minute long shot to fully show the process of Masha's childbirth, taking Masha's fearlessness and tenacity as the most important emotional traction on the visual level, but to bury her mother Rebelling grass snake gray line. Because, only when you give birth to the next generation, you can get rid of the spiritual connection with the previous generation by grasping the control of the body. This may be the most critical psychological reason for Martha's insistence on giving birth at home.
Of course, when the whole film shows this contradiction between Martha and her mother, it also spreads this sense of alienation and resistance in every scene. When dealing with the location, it is obvious that the film and the similar theme of "Manchester by the Sea" have the same performance in the same way. Both of these films are about how the protagonist heals his heart after losing his children. They also use outdoor gloomy weather, ice and snow scenes to create a sentimental atmosphere.
But once in the indoor scene, the contradictions between people and the absent-minded discord will immediately overflow out of the screen. For example, at the beginning of the long shot of childbirth, the three of them seem to be balanced, but in fact they feel choppy and nervous. When Martha brought Sean to visit her mother’s house, Sean and Chris had an interesting conversation around Martha; while the motion trajectory of the camera always followed Martha, in an elegant yet elegant way. The way of alienation was presented before us; immediately afterwards, the conflict between Martha and her mother broke out.
Furthermore, in the first half of the film, Martha has always appeared in a "walking" manner, which also coincides with Martha's uneasy mentality. She was seldom talking, especially after losing her child, and even communicated little with Sean, but there was a huge wave hidden in her heart; just because all the voices around her were admonishing her to "how to do it", but never Asked herself "what do you want to do".
For this psychological hint, "The Fragment of Woman" uses more symbolic means. For example, the key image of "apple" appears many times in the film. When Martha selects apples in the supermarket, she will carefully smell the taste of the apples; and when she and Sean have conflicts, she will unconsciously pick them up. The remaining apple cores on the table; even, Martha will go to the bookstore to buy books on the botany of apple germination to cultivate apple tree seeds at home.
Obviously, the different states of Apple, as well as the meaning of Apple itself, are the implication of the director attached to Martha. This ingenious symbolism had a clear answer in the climax of the film’s court trial: the deceased baby girl smelled of apple. This is Martha’s most sensitive and direct scent memory of this child.
However, further speaking, the design of images and bridge segments such as apples, apple cores, and apple sprouting cultivation is a metaphor for Martha's hope to use it to "reproduce pregnancy". Because the sweetest memory of my daughter does not come from her daughter’s "living" memory, but from her "before birth". That's why, at the end of the movie, Martha's daughter climbed up the leafy apple tree.
And another very symbolic thing in the film is the bridge that Sean originally built. Director Mudluzzo uses its construction progress as the picture of the chapter and directly stamps the date to indicate the passage of time; it also uses it as the degree of wound stitching, that is, the degree of healing in Masha's heart after losing her child. Whether it's an Apple or a bridge, Mudluzzo obviously handles it very cleverly and solemnly, while not losing its flexibility and excitement.
Of course, the most eye-catching feature in this film is naturally the excellent acting skills of actor Vanessa Kirby. Vanessa Kirby did a lot of research in the early stage in order to perfectly present Martha, a complicated role that mainly relies on inner drama and subtle expressions. With the help of the screenwriter Kata Weber, she learned about the true mentality of many women who have lost their children.
The scene where the midwife was accused of guilt in the film actually came from a real case in Hungary. A midwife was sentenced to five years in prison for causing an accident during the delivery of a pregnant woman at home. Actor Vanessa has a better understanding of the local midwife industry in the United States. A family natural childbirth expert in the documentary "Newborn Industry" even acted as her consultant. According to the expert, in the current situation of natural childbirth in American families, this is actually quite a taboo topic, and midwives are often discriminated against and hated.
But when one wants to ask pregnant women about their true delivery needs, few people care about it. After all, in the eyes of her husband and the whole society, the hospital is the only safe place.
It was after Vanessa understood this that she was able to perform Martha's role more effectively; not only in the performance of her lines, we can experience her anger and sense of isolation, but also from her eyes and demeanor. See the tragic background of ironing with the role.
Therefore, she was able to win the Best Actress Award at the Venice Film Festival with this film, which was expected. We can even boldly predict that in this year's Oscars, she might be the same as "Sister-in-law" Francis McDormand as a popular candidate for the movie queen.
And the film "Fragments of a Woman" also allows us to see rare stories about how pregnant women face the suspicions around them and then resist after failing to give birth at home. Furthermore, it actually allows us to reflect, when an uncertain thing turns into a tragedy, should we point the arrow to a woman?
Author | Hua Wuyan; Official Account | Seeing Death in Movies
Edit | Riding a Rooftop Boy; Please indicate the source for reprinting
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