Martha & Ethel

The idea that kept running through my head as I viewed "Martha and Ethel" is how much we tend to buy into ideas that are pre-exisiting rather than original. These ideas can then shape our lives until we find we have become the embodiment or extension of these concepts.

The nannies here raise their charges, imparting the values the nannies were taught by their own parents and personal experience. It seems like a kind of cycle, since now the grown up children have many of the values of the nannies, which the children will be in turn impart to their offspring.

There is a saying that when recurring thought patterns are kept alive mentally and acted out in behaviours, these can take on a factual feeling, with a sense of their being absolute.

This is not really the case, as most of the concepts expressed by the nannies, their employers and children, are only personal reflections. We observe their expressions of limitations, qualifications, doubts, questionings, and attitudes, as peculiar to themselves.

Thus, "Martha and Ethel" aptly demonstrates the way one creates one's own experience of the world--right down to the concept of aging. Does one age because of physical inevitability or because one sees others aging? Does one impart more discipline rather than love to a child because that's the way one was brought up by one's own parents or guardians? Does one play out one's social status lifestyle based upon one's own concept of self-worth?

While this film definitely has it's heart in the right place, alas, it comes across as being disjointed and shifty, without a completely clear sense of mission. It's cerainly not the subject's fault, who are quite lively senior citizens--only the filmmakers, who may have been a tad too close to their subjects to objectively shape their film's scenario.

It's "A" for effort here, though, with some stimulating observations which periodically arise. Cheers for both of these 87-year old "heroines:" the real-life Martha and Ethel. More power to these ladies, and may they move smoothly and joyfully into their 90s and beyond.

This documentary follows two women who were nannies for two different families whose children were friends. The film tells each woman's story and looks at her impact on the family. The two women are similar in many ways yet have totally different backgrounds, values and attitudes.

I didn't know quite what to expect when I started watching this – and indeed at times it's clear that the makers didn't really know what they were getting at either. However this was only occasionally. For the most part the film is happy to meander through the women's lives and look at their upbringing and the way they are. And for the most part it works out really well – the stories are good and the women themselves are real characters.

Martha comes off a little cold but is nicer when taken back to Germany. Ethel is a real attention grabber – she is friendly and funny and very full of life. Whenever the film focuses on her it comes to life and is very grabbing.

Overall this is very personal and therefore may not grab everyone – but there's plenty to enjoy and in some ways it's like an open chat with an old friend.