Film Review: “Maudie” Makes You Fall For In Love For This Real- Life Folk Legend/ Painter
Aisling Walsh’s Maudie is a sheer character piece based of real-life folk-painter Maud Lewis. At two hours it begins slowly as we are introduced to biographic protagonist when she is the meekly sweet but tossed away Maud Dowley. An arthritic woman whose life of chronic, bodily pain has left her family, brother Charles (Zachary Bennett) and Aunt Ida (Gabrielle Rose), treating her as if there is no power to her voice.
Walsh does beautifully in opening up Maudie as a woman too spiritually discredited and diminished for her body; until ,she meets the bittersweet Everett (played heartbreakingly by Ethan Hawke). I am a sucker for love, and there is something absolutely gorgeous to watching two people, otherwise alienated by the world, slowly find a home in each other. After her brother sells the family home, Maudie answers Everett Lewis’ ad for a live-in house-keeper. In this, the film begins to find a quicker pace, of which it becomes brisk as they fall for each other. Written by Sherry White, the dialogue and dynamic between Maudie and Everett is so sincere that you, literally, feel them falling for each other. Yet, what makes their romance so entrancing and tragic is that it is based off a genuine loneliness. Both are poor persons living in Nova Scotia, and seemingly inheriting unhappiness as much as no money from prior generations. Hawke shines as the brutish man with a secretly huge heart, who foils to Sally Hawkins’ infectiously noble, subtly witty Maud. Hawkins radiates that Maudie Lewis was a genuinely good human being, which makes you so happy to see her paintings, a childhood past-time reinvigorated by Everett’s support, become a national success. As Maudie literally adds color to Everett’s home and life, you almost want to reach through the screen and hold her like she were the last good heart to beat in this world. Hence, you will certainly cry as you witness, like all great love stories, their inevitable end.
Maudie spans through Maud Lewis life, 1903-1970, but focuses on her “great loves”, painting and Everett. Visually, the film focuses on Nova Scotia’ nature and build it as the most magically, lonely place; with miles of greenery and random sparks of human beings that flare in and out of your life. Thus, you understand the deep, devout connection between Everett and Maudie. With or without people, they were the unfortunate definition of “social outcasts”;” too poor or disabled” to be seen as equals in a world that had no idea how much better it was because Maudie and Everett lived in it. Maudie Comes Out In Theatres On June 16.
