MATERNA – A Review by Cynthia Flores
The new film Materna was a winner of several 2020 Tribeca Film Festival awards. It’s a powerful film with scenes that will stay in your head long after the credits have rolled. I particularly loved the ending. I choose to keep from divulging any spoilers in my description of the movie. Instead, letting you enjoy the film as it unfolds on your screens at home.
Materna starts on an underground subway car at night in NYC. From the start, you can tell this will be no ordinary ride. Instead, the film takes its time telling us about four women riders at the wrong place at the wrong time. All of them are isolated in their own ways by city life. They have nothing in common. They are separated by class, politics, race, and religion. Yet each woman is bound by a shared hunger for identity, connection, and maternal relationships. Thus, the name of the film.
Jean (Kate Lyn Sheil), with her long stringy hair and intense gaze, is a woman who creates video games in her home office. She lives a life filled with austere qualities. Her world is colored in muted tones with regimented days. She only speaks to her mother on the phone. For whatever reason, she rarely leaves her apartment. So, her ride on the subway is an impulsive move.
Mona (Jade Eshete) is a beautiful African American aspiring actress. She is working with her acting coaching Wanda (Cassandra Freeman) and digging deep into her painful relationship with her mother. Mona needs the pain to use for a part she’s auditioning for. She boarded the subway that night after a breakthrough session with Wanda.
Ruth (Lindsay Burdge) is a white privileged Jewish wife and mother living in an affluent neighborhood. She is hugely conservative in her views but at her wits end with her young son Jared (Jake Katzman). She asks her liberal brother Gabe (Rory Culkin) to dinner to see if he can find out the truth of why her son was punished at school. After the disastrous meal, Ruth examines her political views and their influence on her son. She rarely uses the subway, but tonight grabs that ill-fated underground to find her brother to apologize.
Lastly, we have Perizad (Assol Abdullina). She has emigrated to the US and calls New York home. She has just returned from an emotional visit back home to bury her beloved uncle. There she must face her stern mother and loving grandmother. She is physically and emotionally exhausted when she pulls her suitcase in after her as she boards the subway train that evening. She is wearing her uncle’s jacket and listening to music on her earphones when the trouble starts.
With their futures at stake, all four women’s lives are upended by the fateful encounter underground with Paul (Sturgill Simpson), an obviously troubled vet who is drunk and angry. At this time, all the women’s stories of personal transformation become a battle for survival.
I loved Materna’s moody cinematography by the team of Greta Zozula, Chananun Chotrungroj, and Kelly Jeffery. Their use of the city and showing the nude female form without sexualizing it was critical to the storytelling. It let the actresses spread their wings to give us riveting character studies that had the ring of truth to them.
When asked what drew the director to such an intimate project, David Gutnik is quoted as saying: “As a man, and as a filmmaker, I set out to reimagine my identity, to confront pain in my life and in my work. At the time, my co-writers, Jade Eshete and Assol Abdullina, were going through challenges of their own. Likewise, they wanted to take on their most sensitive personal conflicts in a film. Materna was conceived in this perfect storm when we were all at our most vulnerable. Together, we adapted our real-life family dramas, and both Jade and Assol went on to assume their own fictionalized roles on screen.”
I give Materna a 4-star rating. It’s a tight psychological film worth putting on your watch list.
Directed by: David Gutnik
Written by: David Gutnik, Assol Abdullina, Jade Eshete
Rated: NR
Selig Rating: 4 Stars
Running Time: 105 min
Drama
Release: On all digital platforms and VOD on August 10th
Starring: Kate Lyn Sheil, Assol Abdullina, Jade Eshete, Lindsay Burdge, Sturgill Simpson, Rory Culkin
The Selig Rating Scale:
5 Stars – Excellent movie, well worth the price.
4 Stars – Good movie
3 Stars – OK movie
2 Stars – No need to rush. Save it for a rainy day.
1 Star – Good that I saw it on the big screen but wish I hadn’t paid for it.
