Reviewing Movies

It is a dis-heartening experience to go back and look at the reviews for a movie one particularly liked and discover that the professional reviewers were particularly unkind in discussing it. (Not nearly so as for those who made it, mind you.) But then quilts are not made by big city movie editors and neither was this movie.

I’ve grown up around quilt makers and actually sewn some stitches myself. Quilts are patched together from remnants of worn out clothing that still have wear left in them. For everyday use there are “patchwork” quilts; but for sophisticates the number of patterns and indeed pattern books is endless. The quilt being created in this movie is a collection of blocks created by each of the quilters from pieces of fabric that were once clothing they wore and each fabric or pattern is freighted with memories of the experiences they had when they wore them. The movie itself is “quilted” together from the memories these fabrics evoke in each of the ladies who contribute.

Finn, the narrator of the piece is a spoiled, self-indulgent brat dumped on her grandmother from her earliest years by her whacky flower-child mother. She is struggling to commit herself to a thesis, to her boy-friend, to growing up…. Dermot Mulroney, the long-suffering boy-friend has a minor role here; Johnathon Schaech, of the protruding pecs, is the summer fling. Knowing the value of a quilt and the months of work that goes into making one I find it a telling commentary on Finn’s character that she places so little value on this freshly finished, difficult to wash, heirloom that she wraps it round her and drags it through the red soil of the fruit orchard that surrounds her home.

# posted by garthmailman@gmail.com @ 8:57 am