THE MOTHER: Of Unexpected Desires

Roger Michell’s British film ‘The Mother’ (2003) was an unlikely choice to begin my film-viewing season in the New Year. But I picked it up at the British Council Library for no apparent reason (except perhaps a secret desire to see the irresistible Daniel Craig in his pre-Bond avatar) and promptly proceeded to watch it during an unexpected snatch of privacy in my ever-bustling home last evening.

It was engaging, disturbing and thought provoking – everything one expects of good cinema. Anne Reid plays May, a nondescript old woman who accompanies her husband Toots (Peter Vaughan) to London to visit their children Bobby and Paula. In scenes reminiscent of dozens of Bollywood melodramas (but handled with far greater sophistication and economy of expression), the director quickly establishes how the children and grandchildren have no time to spare for the aged couple and merely look at them as a hindrance to their busy city lives. Suddenly, Toots dies – without much ado – and the artificial façade of civility is shattered. Instead of quietly retreating in her suburban home (as her son hopes she would), May chooses to extend her stay in London, thereby fuelling awkwardness in the family as the two children can scarcely camouflage the inconvenience her presence causes them.

May, it seems, is fully conscious of their umbrage, but doesn’t think too much about it. Instead, she wanders around the city basking in warm sunlight and experiencing her first brush with real freedom. As she shuttles between Paula and Bobby’s house, she finds herself thrown together with Bobby’s friend and Paula’s much-married boyfriend, Darren (Daniel Craig), a temperamental maverick who’s renovating Bobby’s house. May derives solace from the much-younger Darren as he talks to her about art and poetry and encourages her to revive her old passion for making sketches. Gradually, she tells him about her stifling marriage with a man who wouldn’t let her have any friends and a secret affair that almost liberated her from the drudgery.

While the desperately clingy and eternally discontented Paula expects her mother to convince Darren to leave his wife and make her a commitment, May plunges headlong into an impulsive sexual relationship with him. Watching the old woman shedding her clothes and her inhibitions in front of a man half her age makes you feel awkward – one suspects the filmmaker intended it to be that way. But her behaviour also provokes the question, “Why not?” -- particularly when it’s evident that she’s far better tuned to Darren than her daughter can ever be. Besides, there’s no love lost between the members of this dysfunctional family anyway.

And that’s probably what director Michell and writer Hanif Kureishi hoped to convey. Contrary to conventional belief, families are often bound not by unquestioning love, but by deep-rooted resentment. Desires don’t necessarily get diluted with age, nor are they always present among the young. Bobby and Paula lead obviously unhappy lives, yet neither seems willing to break free and take their chances. Instead, it’s their mother – on whom Paula constantly heaps the blame for her lousy existence – who makes her choice to finally throw caution and convention to the wind and grab a few moments of bliss with both hands.

May retains her dignity in the face of violent outbursts from Darren and Paula and Bobby’s cold indifference towards her. By the time she nonchalantly leaves London, we know that she doesn’t need any of them, nor has any sympathy for their pathetic existence. She isn’t retreating to her lonely suburban home to sink into oblivion, but merely to pack her bags for another journey, in search of a new life.

Brilliantly photographed by Alwin Kuchler, ‘The Mother’ boasts of breathtaking performances from Craig and Reid as the unlikely lovers. Reid, in particular, undergoes an astonishing transformation from being an unremarkable, listless woman to one who carries her newfound self-belief and her vibrant clothes with great poise. The film leaves you questioning and marveling at its dysfunctional players – but unlike Michell’s syrupy romantic hit ‘Notting Hill’, there are no rosy endings and pat answers ‘The Mother’ has to offer.

Deepa Gumaste