Cotton Mary

This has got to be the best movie I have ever seen that tackles the madness that self hatred can bring. Yes we have seen plenty of movies in which someone has a identity crisis. But this movie actually in a very understated way shows how self hatred is a psychological illness that I believe is serious problem that people tend It sweep under the rug. It shows that a person who has lived under colonialism in India slowly slips into darkness because no matter how she tried to assimilate and to act just like the British even to the detriment her own people. She will always remain a Indian no matter if her father was white She will always remain a person she hates a Indian, a "blackie". .

As a black woman I have seen this behavior so many times. When I say that black people who act like Mary are sick white people say I am racist because to them the person I am referring to is a great person who never sees race or some other ridiculous reason. When in reality all they see is race, their race and they hate it. Cotton Mary personifies these people to a Tee. They will undermined their own people to the white man so perhaps the white man will think they are not like "those people", For example when Cotton Mary causes a lifelong servant Abraham to loose his job. She knew that the mistress of the house, Lily would not even question if this trusted person would steal, because of her self hatred to her all of "those people, blackies" steal so of course Lily would believe that too. The funny thing is that these people like Cotton Marry usually take on the characteristics of the negative stereotype, they hate so much. She was the one who was stealing.

This man lived there for as long as she was alive and when she dismissed him he said "this is my home"" , she did nothing. The little daughter was the only one in the family that had sense. So when they go back to look for him, he is gone. Disappeared, poof, just like that.

Now Mary thinks she is one of them. So to show she is a big shot to her sister and friends she steals things from the household as if they were hers and gives it to her sister and friends as gifts. it is incredible how she takes the mistress's baby to the sister she she can feed it breast milk but in the same breath call her sister all types of demeaning names. To Mary those "blackies" are only good as long as she has use for them. Just like the Brits or any colonial power treated the natives of the country they colonized.

I am not going to go into the ending but to me this his how it always ends. Reality sets in and they end up back home, ANd always for the same reason.

Someone mentioned she slowly started living in the Land of Make Believe. But I will disagree and say she was always lived there. Her self hatred led her to deny who she was. She was always crazy. Only when reality sets in does she seem to break. But I say she was always broken., but she never realized it. Only when she realized reality did she herself look it, But she always was a nut..

I find this behavior is very much a reality within communities that have been traditionally oppressed. I am Jamaican and so many times I have seen remnants of Jamaicans that actually lived under colonialism acting more like the British then the British and treating their own people like dirt.

I see it happens here in America. Where the black person or other people of color have been broken down so much that they actually believe they are garbage while aspiring to be a white person. Jewish people talk about self hatred all of the time.

This is the first movie I ever saw that came right out and tackled this problem.. I read some reviews that were not crazy about this movie and some felt that Mary was annoying and a unsympathetic character.. I can understand how people would feel that way. They most likely do not fully understand the full depths of the psychological damage colonialism or oppression had on the oppressed.

To me she was a sympathetic person because she she suffered form the illness of self hatred. Remember this movie took place in 1957. Today in the year 2006 I still see people like Cotton Mary because this illness is something that is brought down from generation to generation. All one has to do is look at the last scene with Cotton Mary and the little girl to understand what I mean.

A sensitive look at the difficulties faced by a woman in colonial India, during the period when nationalism was starting to set in. The story opens with an India-born Englishwoman who goes into labour, is taken to the hospital, and gives birth to a sickly child. When it turns out that her milk doesn't come in, a nurse with mixed British/Indian heritage takes pity on her, finds a wet nurse, moves into her house, and begins to manipulate the situation to her own advantage.

As the story progresses, the husband's infidelity and disassociation is presented, as is the blindness of the wife, and the racist superiority of the expatriate British community. The Englishwoman's preteen daughter turns out to be the voice of reason who opens the woman's eyes to the situation as it is.

This is a slow-paced visually interesting story that focuses a great deal of attention on nurturing and nursing, and the complexity of a materially richer culture clashing and feeding on a materially poorer one.

Thank Goodness Merchant and Ivory share some stuff.

They are both masters of creating an intoxicating atmosphere ! The scenery of their movies are always breathtakingly beautiful. 'Cotton Mary' is no exception.

And Ismael Merchant lured a leading lady into his picture that is even more gorgeous than all the scenery of the Merchant-Ivory films (in which she has shined so often) combined. Besides that, Greta Scacchi is an astonishing actress, and so she is again in this film. So fragile yet so present, what an enormous accomplishment !! Her performance alone deserves a (re)viewing of this film.

The other principal actors give us very nice portrayals too.

BUT...

Somehow Merchant does not seem to be able to capture the excitement his partner Ivory finds so easily. Somehow this beautiful picture with good performances and a stunning Scacchi refuses to really fly after taking off nicely.

The film is not as bad as some would like you to believe, far from it. Imagery and acting and the technical side of filming, together with the beautiful scenery, will make 'Cotton Mary' an agreable pastime for 2 hours.

But surely it could have been so much more with all the talent and beauty assembled ? It was nice, where it could have been great. If the characters would have been given a bit more depth, this would have been a stunning film, instead of the nice one it is now...

First of all, the worst and most misrepresentational cover art for any video, ever. The characters and fleshy situation depicted are incidental to the film.

A movie with an utterly unlikable protagonist, and no one to identify with or get behind as an audience member. It all ends up feeling as self-important as its title character. The only reason I didn't turn it off was that nothing was on television until after the tape ran out.

Don't get me wrong, there are Merchant-Ivory films I've really loved, like "Room With A View" and "Remains of the Day." But M-I films either suck you in or they don't, and halfway through this one made me wish I had a 'relief video' handy, perhaps one with car chases and explosions.

For one thing, the title character, a thieving, scheming servant, was completely unlikable. There was no attempt to draw humor from the situation. For another, the character played by Greta Scacchi, an actress I love, was a hopeless dupe. Not only did she seem unaware of the very existence of baby bottles and wet nurses, but one would think that an upper class British woman in India would have a well-developed radar for servant politics and shenanigans.

Lastly, the film would have you believe that Cotton Mary could take a baby, ship it across the river to her sister's compound to nurse, ship it back - and still have time for her various plots? As I recall, the little buggers want to feed pretty often.

If you want to see an allegory on British colonialism in south Asia, watch "A Passage to India" or "The Man Who Would Be King," the latter having more action in any three minutes of its running time than "Cotton" had in its entire length.