Matt and Mara
“Your relationship seems young,” observes a passport photographer to Professor Mara (Deragh Campbell) in the opening of the drama, gleefully crafted ‘Matt and Mara’ directed by Matt Johnson when, novelist Matt, (Matt Johnson) leaves his seat to take a call, assuming the photographer and his wife are married for a long time. They first met in college, and after several years, while they first meet again, it seems their relationship is imbued with the optimism of a couple whose relationship has neither seen dullness or its strength has gone through the trials of time and is full of playful energy.
Although the title of writer-director Kazik Radwanski’s thoughtful love story does not suggest that the film centers around women, it is undoubtedly focused on Mara Samir’s point of view. The narrative shifts from the classroom, combining her poetic grammar and lecturing, seminars and individual work with students, to Mara’s first dates with Matt and her sexualized relationships around Matt and their child. The text also portrays a rather monotonous life of the protagonist at home with her husband, a musician named Samir, and their child.
Instead, the title emphasizes the fact that she is unable to resolve her image of herself and Matt. There is an impression that in the ratio of her mind, they will always be young together, her Matt and Mara. But young Matt and Mara are now both not who they once were. In addition, that being, who was M&M, or singular, perhaps she thought it was only except that what it could have been. In her poetry class, Mara motivates her learners to change the grammar of their poems, to rephrase perspectives in the hope of understanding beyond the words and phrases the emotion they convey. Likewise, does Mara need to turn to herself and examine her love for Matt?
“Who has the self conscious ‘problem’, I wonder out strong, who makes me self conscious, the me self or the keepers of coffee beans?,” he says, which makes him smile even today, why Matt came up with such a question during their first meeting over coffee after talking about the piece.
Later, Mara recounts her impressions of the jacket biography on ‘Rat King and Other Stories,’ which portrays the author as ‘sharp takes and fresh assertions on modern life’, comparing it to the insipid biographical account of her colleague on the professor page. The audience finds Matt and Mara, their artistic creations and the persons who bear those works in their most natural, humane and deeper aspects which do not whittle down to the succinct description by a third party.
Mara is “made of glass” as Matt describes her; in fact, Campbell is very much stiff and brittle in her physical make up as if she is lost in thoughts all the time. Words are the only forms of expression that her physical being permits her. But beyond that façade is a hurricane of feelings that are concealed; or occasionally exposed through quick glances. Whereas, Johnson possesses the same playful and laid-back demeanor that was charming in his feature “BlackBerry” but here he radiates a false confidence which hides the fragility of impassioned relationships. His view of Mara is sham, she has moved ahead in her life, and this perspective isolates him from all the warmth that love should consociate. His adoration for her has not found its way to a physical desire; all signs point toward it being one sided.
Due to Samir getting themselves involved into the process of recording an album, he is unable to drive Mara across the border for an overnight literature meetings in Ithaca.
This responsibility is placed on Matt, the relationship of whom in her life Mara is yet to reveal to Samir. During the rest at the Niagara Falls, everything that seemingly was growing between them reaches its breaking point and forces Mara to look at the current status of things. Not much is said and done, but a lot is portrayed and felt. Somehow everything changes and nothing changes.
Towards the close of this Bergmanesque tale, Radwanski continues with the whys and wherefores of the bond between Mara and Samir, where the touch of a finger is more than enough to narrate the entire construct of the world inhabited by the two. It is one that is firmly at odds with the disconcerting and repressed nature of Mara’s relationship with Matt.
Even so, even if it is a whisper, Matt in a way is always there with her, hidden in the core of her heart as a kind of a keepsake that only she knows the value of, a crumpled piece of paper that is stuffed in a book that has a very secure location on the shelf, one that in the future she would be sure of knowing.
There are no right answers in the film on the issue of their circumstances. There is no happy ending as a climax eventually turns out to be. There is only love in all its forms; beautiful chaos, outright expressions and quiet recognitions, collisions and separation.
Similarly to how a simple shift in tone can change the entire tenor of a poem, so too this love with the fractal nature that exists within Mara, as well as within all of us.
For More Movies Visit Putlocker.