Joan Crawford has worked hard all her life. However she has not left a single cent for Christina or Christopher, quoted "for the reasons well-known to them". My first reaction is to doubt whether her net worth is negative, given her pursuit of certain glamourous kind of lifestyle.
Well jokes aside, I do believe people are born with different worldviews. Allowing me to be a little bit judgemental, Joan is more like a man than a woman. She values respect, reputation and career-related achievements more than love or family. Nowadays it is common to see a woman like that. But back in the 30s, she was definitely rare.
Cliché has it that one must have loved reallly hard before she could hate somebody so bad. Joan was definitely toughtest on Christina, not sure if Christina is the naughtiest one though. Joan must have loved Christina so much before she hated her so without leaving any inheritance to her. The funny thing is that Christina seems to be the one most alike her with a similiar multi-marriage history. Maybe it is due to Christina's rebellious character, or her chosen path as an actress, or even her presence to prove that Joan's failed as a mother. It is human nature that the things one cannot obtain are what he/she wants most, especially for people like Joan. She is widely loved and has earned an extraordinary life. The one thing she cannot have is Christina's love. She cannot handle the fact that she was so emotionally instable when dealing with young Tina that it has caused permenant damages to their relationship. There is an inerasable scare in the heart of both Joan and Christina. This is one thing Joan has failed in this life, which she can never really admit.
By leaving nothing in heritance for Christina and Christopher, Joan has ruined her last chance to repair their relationship, which led Christina to tell her side of story and made this movie possible. Maybe Tina and Christopher will forgive their mother one day. But by putting a higher price sticker on fame than other stuff in life, one would always end up in vain and never have made it as a qualified mother.
Eighty years ago when Joan decided to be a mother, she thought she wanted to be loved as mommie dearest. She thought that she needed family love for her life to be complete. But in fact, she never did. Deep down in her heart, she just wanted to be admired and obeyed. Society may tell you so and so. But sadly, no one can change what his or her own heart truly desires.
为什么大家都在骂这片子,金酸莓奖还拿了好几个,我看完怎么如此震撼!
Faye Dunaway’s Joan Crawford biopic MOMMIE DEAREST is a torpedo that completely deep-sixed the Oscar winner’s hitherto exalted career and after which her status never recovered. The film is mocked as a stinker of high camp, a mean-spirited ridicule of Ms. Crawford and a star’s vanity project hitting wide of the mark.
Indeed, the film is ghastly to look with its brassy production design under its televisual lighting (the Crawford mansion is a holdover of Hollywood golden era’s studio construction, but without the usual treatment of a silver sheen, it is grossly unappealing), which presents a glitzy drabness that is the antithesis of one’s preconception of Hollywood glamour. Its script, based on Crawford’s adopted daughter Christina’s massively popular tell-it-all autobiography, implies in the ending that the book could be Christina’s ultimate tit-for-tat after being disinherited in her mother’s will.
It stands to reason that there is a faint but distinct ghost of vilification and willful exploitation behind the whole story, which goes for the jocular to expose child abuse and bad parenting, the imbalance between careerism and parenthood, a movie star’s imponderable hubris and her throat-cutting aggression against patriarchy. In retrospect, MOMMIE DEAREST never intends to be pretty and glamorous, but grotesque and tumultuous, baring all its bad blood, petty grievances and accumulated rancor, which audience promptly takes as a scandalous exposé trying to color Ms. Crawford as an abomination of a mother.
That is when factual relativism kicks in, the account from Christina may not be the whole truth but it panders to the public’s curiosity of espying a celebrity’s personal demerits behind the closed doors, of which both Ms. Dunaway and director Frank Perry decide to make a production. Taking the example of the notorious “wire hanger” scenes, in default of any explanation of Joan’s aversion to wire hangers (something could be linked to her childhood hardship as her mother worked in a laundry shop, they rumple up clothes), MOMMIE DEAREST is guilty as charged to intentionally conjure up a freaky, irrational, hysterical monster out of Ms. Crawford.
Graced by the undiminished spotlight, Dunaway proves, once again, to be a screen powerhouse that can grab audience by the throat with her sheer presence and if eyebrows can kill, hers must be the most lethal. Her emotional intensity is up to the eleventh in objectifying Joan’s delusion, frustration and fighting spirit. And when Joan takes it all on a young Christina (Hobel is a feisty cherub does a cracking job of feigning being disciplined, wounded and traumatized), it is a cogent corroboration that motherhood isn’t for every member of the fairer sex.
As the adult Christina, Scarwid braves herself stoutheartedly to stand up against a Dunaway going apeshit as the two go physical in front of a visiting journalist (Brando, the last time she graces the silver screen), a flimsy plot machination cannot be credible. But how Christina’s horrid childhood experiences have altered her mentality and what are the consequences? That is the thorny essence conspicuously left untapped in Perry’s over-sensationalized melodrama.
referential entries: Frank Perry’s THE SWIMMER (1968, 7.0/10); James L. Brooks’ TERMS OF ENDEARMENT (1983, 7.8/10); Sydney Pollack’s THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR (1975, 6.7/10).
Title: Mommie Dearest
Year: 1981
Country: USA
Language: English
Genre: Biography, Drama
Director: Frank Perry
Screenwriters: Frank Yablans, Frank Perry, Tracy Hotchner, Robert Getchell
based on the book by Christina Crawford
Music: Henry Mancini
Cinematography: Paul Lohmann
Editor: Peter E. Berger
Cast:
Faye Dunaway
Diana Scarwid
Mara Hobel
Rutanya Alda
Steve Forrest
Howard Da Silva
Harry Goz
Michael Edwards
Jocelyn Brando
Priscilla Pointer
Xander Berkeley
Rating: 6.7/10