Monday Movie Review: Mary & Martha

Happy Monday! So today in trying to decide which movie I was going to review.. it was a toss up between Mary and Martha and Django. While I have LOTS to say about Django...I am choosing to take a few minutes to go over Mary and Martha and next week we will go over Django!

I watched it for the first time late last night. I seriously stayed up till 330am to watch this. I found it incredibly touching and inspiring. 

Here's what the movie is about.. 

Hilary Swank stars as Mary and Brenda Blethyn stars as Martha, an American interior designer and British housewife who have little in common apart from the one thing they wish they didn't. When malaria strikes, the lives of these very different women change forever. They forge a deep friendship and embark on an epic journey of self-discovery to Africa, dedicating themselves to the cause of malaria prevention. Beginning to rebuild their lives, they show how ordinary people can make a difference and inspire positive change in the process. Enlisting the help of Mary's estranged father, a former politico, the two women beseech both the powers that be and ordinary people to get involved, realizing a shared responsibility to all the world's children. Written by HBO

So a lot of this movie takes place in South Africa. Mary has a son who has some problems at school. She decides to take him out.. travel and teach him herself. One of my favorite quotes in the movie is

" I want to be an extraordinary mom...and that means I have to do something extraordinary. " 

She encounters Malaria in the worst kind of way in South Africa. Both women... Mary and Martha start out with no connection to malaria.. but in the end both end up so motivated and passionate about something that touched their both of their lives in horrific ways. 

The film is really about being a parent, and about, as Martha says, the question of "What can a mother without a child really do?

Well these women set out on a mission to help as many as they could. 

Look at these statics that are pointed out in the movie.. 

Did you know that if you take every single person killed in a terrorist act around the world in the last 20 years -- and add to that every life that's been lost in the Middle East since the Six Day War in '67 -- and add to that every single American life we lost in Vietnam and Korea -- and every single other military conflict America's been involved in since then, Iraq, Afghanistan... If you take all those lives -- that we'd all have given so much to save -- you've still got to multiply them by two to get to the number of kids who die of malaria every single year.

I don't know what will come of this film.. I don't know if it will win any awards but it is truly one of the best most moving movies I have ever seen. I laughed, I cried, and I even got a little angry. Angry because I can't understand how this keeps happening. At this point the real number of people dying of malaria each year now has gone down to around 650,000. Yea.. 650,000 SOULS gone in one year. 

Take a second and check out the trailer...

I am totally giving this movie 

because it was a very good movie. I hope it can be enjoyed even though its a sad movie.. It has some wonderful parts that are not sad.. but maybe for some of us, it will open our eyes to a cause that needs all of our help. Maybe you will try to save one life or join a movement that in our life we can stop the deaths of millions of people...mainly children. 

And let me say this.. Mary played by Hilary Swank and Martha played by Brenda Blethyn were amazing together. They fit like a hand and glove. I thought they were amazing in this movie.. and I think this HBO movie should be watched by everyone. I don't think you will be disappointed at all.. in fact, I am hoping it inspires you to take some kind of action. And the final point I will make ( thanks to this wonderful movie ) 

You can be Ordinary and still make Extraordinary Changes. 

What a wonderful movie. 

K Jaggers

♥