Maudie

I think Sally Hawkins was great in this year's The Shape of Water. I understand why she's getting attention for it and I think she would be a fine nominee. But really, there's no question in my mind that it's her performance in Maudie that is the much more impressive overall. She gives a career-best turn here, a completely internal performance that could have been all showy, broad theatrics had a lesser actress gotten the part. She's absolutely amazing and in a fair world would be getting nominated (if not winning) for this work. Ethan Hawke is also fantastic, showing that he can really shine in character parts like this.

"The whole of life, already framed, right there." Maud Lewis (Sally Hawkins)

Maud Lewis was a pioneer of the Art Naïve school of folk painting flourishing all over, especially in Canada, and specifically here in Nova Scotia. The quote shows how natural her genius was looking out a window from her 10x12 foot home.

The biopic Maudie thrives on Hawkins' superior acting talent that superficially shows her deformed leg, her debilitation from arthritis, and her emphysema doomsday from smoking. Yet she radiates joy and a keen eye for the simple beauty of life. As she tells her husband, Everette (Ethan Hawke), she doesn't need much.

With no formal artistic training, Maud initially uses a finger to paint a tulip with vibrant colors. She barely looks back as she paints chickens, dogs, birds, and "things," all observed inside and outside the humble cottage on doors, windows, boards, and whatever.

The pain most artists experience in order to express beauty comes for Maud not just from her physical handicaps but from her husband, a rude fishmonger and wood chopper without a lick of humor. He begrudgingly allows her to sell her paintings and pockets the proceeds. However, he loves her in his own crude way and provides the home, albeit no more than two rooms, that spawns the art.

Cinematographer Guy Godfree captures the sweep of open nature that surrounds the town and the intimately colorful interior transformed by her art. John Hand's production design makes her cottage so meticulously authentic that you might wonder if he borrowed it from the Nova Scotia museum that now houses

it.

Beyond the pleasant bio of a charming painter, the love between the two is one of the best romances of the year. It could be because theirs is hardly conventional or because Hawkins and Hawke are super actors. Or both. Love abides, and as Everett says, "There's me. Them dogs, them chickens, then you."

Although shot in Canada, and although it is about a Canadian, I don't like affixing the term Canadiana to it. It is a Universal movie about the indomitable spirit that some people possess even when faced with horrendous turns of fate. Sally Hawkins is incredibly good as Maud and Ethan Hawke does a superb job of playing Everett Lewis. Hawkins has the accents , the movements, the wry smile and the light that just won't stop shining. Hawke's performance is very nuanced: his character was an emotional cripple and he was violent, but we also know how much he loved and admired his wife. It was a time when dirt poor men asked for nothing, did whatever they must to survive and didn't allow expression of feelings in their lives. Many reviewers have called him "vile", but he could have been a miner, for example, anywhere in the world as easily as a fish seller in Nova Scotia in 1930. I think Ethan Hawke did an amazing job of capturing that man. It has great cinematography, excellent score and a minimalist script that allows, through actual superb acting, to get to know a pair of characters in a movie like never before. Don't miss this one!!

It's a long time since I've seen a film as affecting as this (principally because it isn't emotionally manipulative, which I always resent). Instead it just tells a simple tale of simple folk living in simple times, between whom love eventually blossoms against the odds. It's also a sobering reminder of how hard times were in the early 20th century in rural communities, where gossip and malice were endemic, people worked their fingers to the bone and there was no room for sentimentality. That very unsentimental ethos permeates the film, though of course in many cases it tips over into cruelty, and the cruelty Maudie suffers is at times unbearable. Yet for those tempted to walk out, stick with it because her life improves and she evens starts to smile a bit, once the art therapy kicks in. Take a box of Kleenex, expect to feel humbled (and never to complain again about your affluent neuroses). Beyond that, both leads (Sally Hawkins and Ethan Hawke) are great, and the photography of Newfoundland & Nova Scotia is beautiful, capturing the seascapes and landscapes in the brilliant light.

When you are compelled to write a review, and you realise this is your first ever review of a film, you then understand the impact that a true classic has.

Sally Hawkins, Ethan Hawke, well done! If you want to sit down to a less than fast, but utterly embracing film about life's journey, and how individuals are valued, how they react to outside pressures and put their whole world at risk, then this is the film for you .

Simply.. Brilliant.