The 1939 original movie "The Women" is about rich spoiled women, either bored with family life or ones with high-profile careers and their own power struggles within the physical, mental and emotional spheres. The 2008 remake of this film has a similar all-female theme. All characters and portraits from both films are females and absolutely no male character is evident. I find that amusing but quite clever because the central plot is these women's relationships with men.
One commentary even talks about"..the attention to detail was such that even in props such as portraits only female figures are represented, and several animals which appeared as pets were also female." Note that the dogs featured at the start of the movie are all females and Mary's dog's name is Lucy.
Although well-acted by a formidable group of actresses (I admit I am a Ryan fan), I believe that the film portrays a very vague representation of what a woman truly is, the film started with 2 very well-dressed ladies walking their dogs, both pairs turning on each other, then there’s the gossip from the manicurist, also, one of the four friends has an ever-expanding brood with a sorely misplaced purpose ( “we’re trying until we get a boy”), then her sister is a fashion editor who inspite of her intelligence is forever at the mercy of her boss.
yes I agree- we, girls tend to take too much pleasure in gossip and catfights, in indulging in superficial appearances, in idolizing our children, not to mention our being tenacious people-pleasers, may they be our employers or our husbands but I am not going off on a feminist tangent as a feminist I am not.
I believe we are falsely portrayed in this film, I guess, because its title is "The Women" (admit it girls, in numbers, our emotions, hormones and experiences all play a part that it totally confuses our beliefs, positions and ideologies) and not "The Woman" ( in singularity, this would show who we are with more clarity and honesty).
The confused and lost Mary, the central character was trying to come to terms with her cheating husband, her professional regrets (her dad fired her from her position in the family business), and her motherly mistakes (her rebellious pre-teen daughter stopped communicating with her ). She then encountered another equally -confused woman who told her “love yourself then it gets better” which she follows, oh no....you see the point is to love and take care of yourself, up to a reasonable extent, because self-love brings with it the danger of being too self-directed! That definitely will NOT make things better.
Suddenly, Mary had a “validation” moment when on the next scene, the daughter said “this is cool, mum”. I think that is where she finally FOUND herself - in an other-oriented relationship.
She experienced an epiphany because in the next scene, she was talking to her friend Sylvia and said “ it is not that we can have it all, it is - if we want to have it all”. Go girl, you really got the point!.
Which ties up with this book I am reading, which talks about women getting lost in “wearing many hats” and “being all things to all people”, yes being lost....and we do find ourselves in those moments a lot of times! And yes, even with good people around us.
God the Father has found us and lost, we are no longer.
It is God’s design for us to be “ezers” (pronounced long “a”-zer) which in the Hebrew language means “help, support.” The meaning of ezer for me sheds light to our divine purpose to walk side- by side with men! We are not an afterthought by God, delegated secondary to our husbands and/or fathers. We matter to God too! In a very big way.
Now I promised my mentee (who gave me this book on my birthday) that I would enjoy blogging it. So I will now attempt to do the impossible…
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