{"id":148738,"date":"2021-01-07T00:16:36","date_gmt":"2021-01-06T21:16:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/grief-on-trial-in-pieces-of-a-woman\/"},"modified":"2021-01-07T00:16:36","modified_gmt":"2021-01-06T21:16:36","slug":"grief-on-trial-in-pieces-of-a-woman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/grief-on-trial-in-pieces-of-a-woman\/","title":{"rendered":"#Grief on Trial in &#8216;Pieces of a Woman&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;<strong>#Grief on Trial in &#8216;Pieces of a Woman&#8217;<\/strong>&#8221;<\/p>\n<div>\n<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\">\n                <\/aside>\n<p><!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 3.7.8--><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Grieving the loss of a child is a deep, specific, and enigmatic kind of pain. It\u2019s nearly impossible to communicate to those who haven\u2019t experienced it and subsequently arouses intense loneliness in its victim. <\/span><strong><i>Pieces of a Woman<\/i><\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> explores the sensation of grieving a child; raw, lethargic, and at times confusing. Hungarian director <strong>Korn\u00e9l Mundrucz\u00f3\u00a0<\/strong>(<em>White God<\/em>) knows that this story does not have room for melodrama \u2013 only the truths that people often shy away from.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Mundrucz\u00f3\u2019s English-language debut, is, first and foremost, a film about the jarring displacement of grief. At the beginning of the film, Martha (<strong>Vanessa Kirby<\/strong>) and her partner, Sean (<strong>Shia LeBeouf<\/strong>), are expecting their first child. Only one short scene takes place before Martha goes into labor. Intent on a home birth, the couple call their midwife. But she is in the middle of another labor, so she sends Eve (<strong>Molly Parker<\/strong>), instead. For twenty-four minutes (in a single take), the film unflinchingly shows Martha\u2019s painful and precarious birth, which ends in bliss \u2013 and then heartbreak. After her first gasps of air, the baby turns blue.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The remainder of the film follows Martha and Sean traversing a new, foreign world of grief. And, what <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">should<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> be a film that shows Martha being supported by the world, is really a film that shows Martha against the world. Along with Sean, Martha\u2019s mother, Elizabeth (<strong>Ellen Burstyn<\/strong>), and Martha\u2019s sister, Anita (<strong>Iliza Shlesinger<\/strong>), are obsessed with telling the grieving mother exactly how she should be grieving.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In one of the first scenes after Martha\u2019s tragic home birth, she visits the supermarket and is greeted by one of her mother\u2019s friends, who abrasively wraps her in a tight embrace. When the camera cuts to a wide shot, we are presented with an awkward scene: Martha and some stranger hugging in the middle of a public place. Not only have the intimate details of Martha\u2019s grief been revealed to someone whom she doesn\u2019t know well (the woman admits \u201cyour mother tells me everything\u201d), but she is also now subjected to the gazes of strangers in the produce aisle.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As with that moment, most of the grief in <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Pieces of a Woman<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> is conveyed without words. One of the reasons a mother grieving a baby is so particular is that it is acutely physical. People know when you are pregnant \u2013 the film opens with attendees at Martha\u2019s baby shower admiring her bump \u2013 just as they know when you are no longer pregnant.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Instead of depicting grief with histrionics or crying fits, Mundrucz\u00f3 presents loss in the primal and almost involuntary way it is experienced by many grieving parents. When Martha sees an adorable little girl at the mall, for example, she begins to lactate. It is simply her body\u2019s response to her yearning to feed a baby. The milk stains now seep through her shirt for the world to see, like a cruel brand of grief. The film does not shy away from the gritty details of the physical aftermath of birth. On her first day back at work, a shot of Martha\u2019s gauze panties reveals that she is still bleeding \u2013 heavily. She also routinely has to ice her breasts with bags of frozen peas. Mundrucz\u00f3 also shows the painful aftermath of birth through the physical discomfort of intimacy putting up even more of a barrier between her and Sean.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The process of birth did not end when Martha had a baby \u2013 it extended itself past the birth and death of her child, with no end in sight. Sean, on the other hand, doesn\u2019t wear his grief on his body like his partner. He attempts to express himself through words, but, when that doesn\u2019t work, he turns to more physical vices, like sex and drugs.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">From a storytelling perspective, the sometimes tedious thematic essence of <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Pieces of a Woman<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> makes for a somewhat anticlimactic and, at times, dull watch. The first thirty minutes of the film are suspenseful, fast-paced, and bursting with emotion. The sound design is crowded with shouts, screams, groans, cries, and swears. The characters move quickly \u2013\u00a0and the camera follows them wherever they go. The rest of the film, however, reflects the abrupt loss of life. The characters are stagnant and paralyzed by their grief. It is raw and honest \u2013 but, as a result, is not nearly as exciting as it sets itself up to be.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Perhaps that is why it feels so fitting, then, that <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Pieces of a Woman <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">ultimately becomes a quasi-court drama. The grief that is felt so viscerally must be placed somewhere. However, any climactic and dramatic scene feels somewhat misplaced in <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Pieces of a Woman<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u2013 as if Mundrucz\u00f3, like the characters, is desperately seeking an outlet for the tension of grief.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This also might be attributed to the fact that, although only two short scenes take place in a courtroom, in a sense the entirety of the film does. Martha is on trial by her loved ones for the entirety of the movie. Elizabeth tells Martha that she must do something with her grief, or else she will never get over it. Anita tells her she needs therapy. Sean tells her she must methodically go through the grieving process. But she does not want to do any of these things.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The reason <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Pieces of a Woman<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> will work for some people is particularly the reason it will not work for others. It is honest in its stillness and slowness, but that honesty yields a tortured listlessness. Anything short of that, though, would be dishonest.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Pieces of a Woman begins exclusively <a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.netflix.com\/PiecesOfAWoman\">streaming on Netflix<\/a> starting January 7, 2021.\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>\n<\/div>\n<blockquote><p><strong><span style=\"color: #ff6600;\">If you liked the article, do not forget to share it with your friends. Follow us on\u00a0<span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><a style=\"color: #ff0000;\" href=\"https:\/\/news.google.com\/publications\/CAAqBwgKMLG0nwswvr63Aw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">Google News<\/a><\/span>\u00a0too, click on the star and choose us from your favorites.<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">For forums sites go to <span style=\"color: #ff9900;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/forum.buradabiliyorum.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Forum.BuradaBiliyorum.Com<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>If you want to read more Like this articles, you can visit our <span style=\"color: #ff9900;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/social-media\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Social Media category.<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"color: black;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/filmschoolrejects.com\/grief-on-trial-in-pieces-of-a-woman\/#utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=grief-on-trial-in-pieces-of-a-woman\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;#Grief on Trial in &#8216;Pieces of a Woman&#8217;&#8221; Grieving the loss of a child is a deep, specific, and enigmatic kind of pain. It\u2019s nearly impossible to communicate to those who haven\u2019t experienced it and subsequently arouses intense loneliness in its victim. Pieces of a Woman explores the sensation of grieving a child; raw, lethargic,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":148739,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/filmschoolrejects.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/PIECES-OF-A-WOMAN.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[80382,72487,65047,88702,65048,30482],"class_list":["post-148738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-social-mediaa","tag-ellen-burstyn","tag-iliza-shlesinger","tag-kornel-mundruczo","tag-molly-parker","tag-pieces-of-a-woman","tag-shia-labeouf"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148738"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148738\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/148739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}