American Mary- Movie Review

I recently watched a movie, intrigued by its title and the story line. After watching any movie, I tend to google the critical reviews of the plot and summaries to understand the interpretations. And I  like to write about my own interpretations which I believe are novel and not written before. 

It is one of those rare movies which is both sad and inspiring at the same time but the feminine power outshines the sadness which it harbors. As one of the online movie reviews says,  Mary was a "sculptor with a scalpel".  Themes of male domination and male abuse are rampant in the movie. The evil and immoral nature of male has been pitted against the good and innocent nature of Mary. The movie also mocks at a sad truth which exists in many medical schools in which there are stories of medical female students resorting to sex trade in order to pay their medical college high debts.

The surgical scene of the nipple being removed and the vaginal opening being stitched shut surgically , appear to be a harbinger of closure of what defines the true femininity and womanhood. In a way, that forewarns the closing of the feminine energy which is nourishing and stimulating.  And in fact, we do see that after this Mary is brutally raped under the effect of a spiked drink by none other than her teacher at the medical school, and then she transforms herself into a revenge-seeking body who becomes  a channel for doling out revenge at its gravest, and also enhancing her under-appreciated talents of surgical skill. 

What was sad was that she faced failure in her professional life and personal life which went together throughout the film, hence, at the end I do feel sorry for the downfall and abrupt twist in the plot which leads to murder of Mary. Personal trauma included financial crunch, shock of  underworld surgery and brutal molestation.  That was followed by quitting her medical school when she almost was destined for success as a surgeon so a professional fiasco. The scenes in which she discovers that Billy also could not be trusted as a potential lover, she is shown heartbroken and resorts to the sharp scalpel. The scene showing death of her only personal relationship which was of help- her Nana (grandmother, I suppose) and the scene showing her deleting her name from the contact list was very appealing and subtle.Her transformation as a  sort of single handed super surgeon who miraculously performs intense surgeries all by herself speak well of her intelligence and inherent talent. This is reiterated in the last scene when she has been stabbed and  is shown holding two surgical scissors and suturing her own wound , but, sadly  she dies.  This scene is the culmination of what a real artist or a surgeon can be. I believe in this scene Mary transcended her medical expertise to go on to achieve status of a real artist. As one of the actors remarks to Mary in one of the scenes," you are truly an artist"

In a way , just like the spiked drink, any bit of promise of happiness or love was spiked or poisoned in her own life,  Like when we see that she began to find solace in Billy but then discovers his promiscuous act and she feels stung , and later when Billy talks to her about possibility of driving down to LA for a break and a better place, that hope was cut short by the climax in which we see her abrupt murder at the hands of an unknown person. I thus believe that the  themes of "spike" and the "scalpel" are what appears throughout the movie symbolically. Her fate, just like the real spike showed immense rise and immense fall towards the end too. To summarize the movie in few lines, I'd like to say:

"She did body altering surgeries and in the process every time with the scalpel which she uses on the patient, she cuts out a bit of her own soul each time, all under the spiked influence of revenge"

The boat sculpture

Hi,
I would like to share a beautiful moment. It was when I was in Harborfront Park at Port Jefferson here in Stony Brook. I was taking a  nice walk with a Emily  who is also my neighbour and as we moved past this sculpture, I was bewitched by its beauty.

I was trying to make sense of what I saw when she spoke," Oh, that is a sculpture of a skeleton of a boat and it is carried by four men, probably shipmen."

And as I agreed to what she observed I realized that I interpreted something else in that sculpture.
I began to say to her," Yeah, actually I think that this reminds me of the Hindu tradition when a person dies and four people carry his deceased body on their shoulders, and somehow the body is very much like the boat or the ship which had carried the soul when the person was alive, but now it is more of a skeleton of boat."

And we both smiled at that, myself at my sudden observation and she at the symbolism.

Silk (2007) - movie and the legendary story

I had watched a very subtle, artistic movie called "Silk"(2007).  The movie definitely had great cinematography and style. I want to write about few things from that movie which are still reverberating in my heart, something which I have observed and interpreted.

Such as the hatching of the silkworms from the tiny eggs, that hatching, which is a success sometimes, and unsuccessful the other times, and the metamorphosis into the cocoon and then production of the amazingly shiny and soft material called "silk" are all hidden themes in the movie, or should I put it this way, those numerous thousands of tiny eggs are a silent protagonist of the movie perhaps.  Probably the presence of "silk" as a fabric was related to that of "love" which is as soft and subtle as the silk itself, and when held in hand, it actually tends to slip away, and that was what Hervé, the actor represented too in this deeply artistic movie.  He developed a love desire for the enigmatic Japanese woman Sei in the movie, but the eggs of that desire remain unhatched or were spoilt, even if they did try to hatch.

In any sense, we know that even if the worms had spun the cocoon which would become silk later, it would have slipped away, just in case of Hervé, symbolizing the mysterious nature of unrequited love or love that never reaches a destination.

Overall, the beautiful scenery of steaming spring waters, juxtaposed with the cold snowy weather was remarkably artistic too and symbolic.

Another beautiful symbolism was of that of the little blue flowers which were shown in the scene in which Hervé meets Madame Blanche in the brothel, so that she could translate the Japanese letter for him. I got a feeling that perhaps those blue flowers should symbolize something too, and when I did a bit of google search, I found out that indeed those flowers were extremely symbolic, they were the "forget-me-not" flowers which so fitted in that scene and its emotional hues. The poem like letter which Madam Blanche read out was also indirectly hinting to Hervé to not forget the beautiful woman who loved him and who really wrote that poetry. The beautiful poem is of that movie clip is available on this link written out: Letter poem -Silk

Well, this movie actually made me aware of many facts about silkworms and legend of silk itself. It so happened that there is a legend that a Chinese empress accidentally discovered silk, as silk cocoon fell in her tea while she was sitting under mulberry tree. The Chinese were the ones who actually discovered the secret of silk thus.

Also, I read about the method of silk production.   How sad it was to read that the pupa was killed inside the cocoon which was boiled in hot water in order for the workers to generate silk.  This process in any way was putting an end to the already short life of a moth.  In any way, the beauty of flying away and not getting held back or trapped still prevails, if the pupa would have survived in its cocoon, it would have transformed into the beautiful butterfly which flies away in wonder and never can be captured easily- the lissome being as it is.  And if the pupa is killed in cocoon, the threads of cocoon produce the shiny silk, slipping away from the hands again, the colors brought out by artificial means of dyeing silk.

I smiled at the revelation of the symbolism.

Is it really a fall of the meteor?

The Perseid meteor show was few days ago here in Long Island and there was so much excitement and unrest among many students who wanted to go and watch it, I guess the avid star gazers must be doing that each year.

I'd like to write about the meteor falling on earth and how scientifically, that only means that it's nothing save the cosmic debris which is falling on earth, something which makes the falling object glow, almost making it appear like a shooting star, brightest to each eye.

But how I wondered to myself, it is such a beautiful feeling and a beautiful thing, perhaps, we as humans should also learn to let go of our cosmic debris on this earth too, something which accumulated inside our consciousness for ages, past burdens, regrets, mistakes, memories, failures, frustrations, and shed it all as we journey through our life and enter a new phase.

We,  by shedding, will thus attain that brightness which will be a spectacle for all the viewers and who will, then wish upon us, knowing that we would then have power and glory to make their wishes come true as we  fade away into light.








Source of photo: http://i.space.com/images/i/000/020/498/original/perseid-meteor-kingham-620.jpg?1375803258