Mark Farnsworth is currently reviewing selected films from the London Film Festival.
“A man loves his sweetheart the most, his wife the best, but his mother the longest.” Ken Wardrop’s first feature length documentary begins with this Irish proverb and proceeds with the aid of over 70 interviews with women from the midlands of Ireland to tell the audience just why this is so. Yet we could just as easily be watching one woman’s complete narrative.
Wardrop gently layers each of his heroines one after the other, each increasing with age as they charm, enlighten, and move us with tales of their fathers, boyfriends and husbands. We laugh at the dad the who surrounds himself with Goldfish because he doesn’t like animals, smile sweetly at the prospect of a young couple’s separate washing lines, before the inevitable tragedy of age makes us feel slightly uneasy.
Mothers mourn the sons who have moved away to university or have got married as much as the older women who have lost their husbands to cancer or old age. One widow recounts how she moved her chair next to her deceased partner’s to try and rekindle their years old tradition of drinking wine by the open fire at night. Of course it’s not the same. Looking at her, dignified yet forlorn, how could it ever be?
The consecutive effect of so many brief vignettes is quietly hypnotic, reeling us into “His & Hers” subjective view of tranquil family life. Marriage is the key here: no one is divorced, no one is unhappily married, and the widows wish their husbands were still with them. Of course, in a Catholic country traditionally adverse to divorce, it is tempting for the cynical to look down their noses at Wardrop’s subjects as backward stereotypes without one stroke of ambition beyond raising their families.
They tell us that they’re happy enough, but ultimately, who are we to even say otherwise? We are invited into their homes with their “Shining” interiors and “Barry Lyndon” exteriors, one after the other, strangely echoing a static version of Alan Clarke’s “Elephant,” as we reach the conclusion we should admire these remarkable women, not offer our sarcastic ridicule or pity.
If the unseen men they have nurtured and loved have an ounce of the restrained pride and passion of their female kin then they would have done their mothers proud. Drop the same premise into the Essex estates of Andrea Arnold’s “Fish Tank” and you have a very different film indeed.
“His & Hers,” though, is full of optimism for the future despite the melancholy silent final scene filmed through the window of a nursing home. Perhaps an earlier line hints at the plight onscreen and the real answer to the Irish proverb for these women – “They (men) have your heart in their hands.” In any case, Wardrop’s film makes you want to go and hug your mum or at the very least ring her up and ask her how her day went.
Mark,
I enjoyed your piece about His & Hers, which I found while looking for information about Wardrop’s 2004 short Undressing My Mother. Would you happen to know whether the woman depicted in Undressing My Mother is actually Wardrop’s mother? She is not identified as such, but we are guided to make that assumption. Do you know of any other links to articles about that film?
Many thanks for any help,
Lee Parpart
Thank you Lee.
The best starting point would be imdb and take it from there. If I find anything I’ll post it.
Mark