This is a quiet, slow film. During an era when time is counted by seconds and illustrated with the clownish stunts of a President seemingly more concerned with ratings than with any fabric of life, with society's shorter and shorter attention span, when movie screens are deluged with computer generated images, million dollar special effects, car chases at maximum speed, and lead characters with superhuman physical powers, Maud Lewis stands in her space occupied by Sally Hawkins, the actress who gracefully captures the heroine's awkwardness and beauty for film, and says, "I am to be counted." This film is to be counted. And I'll pass on films faster than a speeding bullet and choose Hawkins and Ethan Hawke as they steadily tell the story of the real-life painter and her troubled husband, Everett.
The film is much like a painting, using images to portray a life. There are few words and barely one is wasted. The dialogue, like the house in which much of the lives are spent, is spare, using colors, landscapes, objects, and faces to tell a simple, amazing story. Much like the artist, Maud Lewis, did, the filmmaker shows us how he sees her world through the sense of sight: a single, still wooden wheel against a backdrop of a brown and gold wheat field, the wooden houses of reds and blues sitting on the hills of Nova Scotia, next to the sparkling sea, still clouds against a radiant sky, a woman's face suddenly opening with a large smile. The photography is dazzling, stunning, yet soft. With all to see, the ear is not neglected: Michael Timmons, the creative force behind the band The Cowboy Junkies, uses his moody, smokey hues to gently orchestrate the score that is true to the woman at the center of the film, and a few lovely songs dot the soundtrack with emotion, language, and beginnings and ends, stirring the canvass of the lives we are invited to witness and, through adroit performances by the actors, even enter.
'Maudie' is what Maud said of windows: "The whole of life, already framed, right there - " and anybody would be lucky to see how it reveals itself.
7.5/10.
The film is much like a painting, using images to portray a life. There are few words and barely one is wasted. The dialogue, like the house in which much of the lives are spent, is spare, using colors, landscapes, objects, and faces to tell a simple, amazing story. Much like the artist, Maud Lewis, did, the filmmaker shows us how he sees her world through the sense of sight: a single, still wooden wheel against a backdrop of a brown and gold wheat field, the wooden houses of reds and blues sitting on the hills of Nova Scotia, next to the sparkling sea, still clouds against a radiant sky, a woman's face suddenly opening with a large smile. The photography is dazzling, stunning, yet soft. With all to see, the ear is not neglected: Michael Timmons, the creative force behind the band The Cowboy Junkies, uses his moody, smokey hues to gently orchestrate the score that is true to the woman at the center of the film, and a few lovely songs dot the soundtrack with emotion, language, and beginnings and ends, stirring the canvass of the lives we are invited to witness and, through adroit performances by the actors, even enter.
'Maudie' is what Maud said of windows: "The whole of life, already framed, right there - " and anybody would be lucky to see how it reveals itself.
7.5/10.