From writer/director Katherine Dieckmann, the acclaimed filmmaker of DIGGERS and A GOOD BABY, comes MOTHERHOOD, starring Uma Thurman, Anthony Edwards and Minnie Driver. Shot entirely on location in New York’s West Village, this bittersweet comedy distills the dilemmas of the maternal state (marriage, work, self, and not necessarily in that order) into the trials and tribulations of one pivotal day. MOTHERHOOD forms a genre of one – no other movie has dedicated itself in quite this way to probing exactly what it takes to be a mother, with both wry humor and an acute sense of authenticity.
Eliza Welch (Thurman) is a former fiction writer-turned-mom-blogger with her own site, “The Bjorn Identity.” Putting her deeper creative ambitions on hold to raise her two children, Eliza lives and works in two rent-stabilized apartments in a walk-up tenement building smack in the middle of an otherwise upscale Greenwich Village. Eliza’s good-natured but absent-minded husband (Edwards) seems tuned out to his wife’s conflicts, not to mention basic domestic reality, while her best friend Sheila (Minnie Driver) understands this – and Eliza -- all too well.
MOTHERHOOD takes place in a single day that pushes to the tipping point Eliza’s fundamental fear she’s lost herself. Starting at dawn, her to-do list is daunting: prepare for and throw her daughter’s 6th birthday party, mind her toddler son, battle for a parking space during an epic alternate side parking showdown, navigate playground politics with overbearing moms, and mend a rift with after posting her best friend’s confession on her blog. On top of it all, Eliza decides to enter a contest run by an upscale parenting magazine. All she has to do is write 500 words answering the deceptively simple question, “What Does Motherhood Mean to Me?”
In the process of trying by nightfall to put these thoughts into words that don’t “sound like bad ad copy,” Eliza rediscovers her own voice and realizes what is truly valuable in her life. At once hilarious and poignant, MOTHERHOOD looks at the challenges facing mothers everywhere with a keen eye to every slight to a nearly-middle-aged woman’s selfhood – from being called “M’am” by condescending twentysomethings to endlessly stooping to pick up toys and a spouse’s dropped socks.
MOTHERHOOD is a hymn to the joys and sorrows of raising children, and the necessity of not losing yourself in the process. Thurman’s Eliza is a unique creation, by turns endearing and hysterical, tender and aggrieved. She is ably abetted by Edwards’ subtly layered performance as her distracted spouse, and Driver’s earthy, bemused turn as her closest ally. With remarkably naturalistic performances from its child actors and a roster of colorfully only-in-New-York supporting players, MOTHERHOOD is at once powerfully heartfelt and scrupulously real.
Director’s Statement
Why aren’t there any decent comedies about motherhood? This sometimes trying yet often highly rewarding state of being is rarely explored in movies as a subject worthy of consideration in and of itself. Cinematic mothers tend to be either perfectly selfless or monsters of controlling will, sacrificing or shrewish, when in fact real mothers may be both of these things simultaneously. A rare mama movie precedent is Baby Boom, that fairy tale in which Diane Keaton tosses away her New York career to raise her kid in a picture-perfect Vermont farmhouse with a nice vet played by Sam Shepard. Other mother-driven comedies are few and far between to the point of glaring absence – unlike, say, the Apatovian oeuvre dedicated to the regressed boy-man who refuses to grow up.
Is motherhood intrinsically unfunny? Must the topic provoke eye-rolling and exasperated sighs from those both unprepared to breed, or disinclined to do so (although those eye-rollers presumably all, at one point, had mothers)? Can a movie dealing with this subject matter exist without being branded a “chick flick”? Certain classic conflicts – like the proverbial non-balance of work and childrearing – simply never make it onto the screen in a truthful way. Yet motherhood is a microcosm of so many experiences, universal ones, like facing the passage of time and grappling with a changed sense of self. What about that complexity? Couldn’t a motherhood movie be both slapstick and sobering, hilarious and heartbreaking?
In writing Motherhood, I drew from the specifics of my own life, raising two kids in two separate rent-stabilized walk-up apartments in New York City’s hyper-gentrified West Village. Like Eliza Welch, played by Uma Thurman, I send my kids to the hippie public school around the corner, and have done battle with alternate side parking, annoying tourists, judgmental moms, misspelled birthday cakes sold by snotty clerks in hipster bakeries, and the looming party favor aisle. Not to mention the intrusive New Yorker who is always compelled to tell you a thing or two – especially if you’re a mother (sometimes akin to wearing a gigantic “Kick Me” sign). Above all, I know that I, and hopefully many other parents (and non-parents as well), can relate to Eliza’s valiant struggle to generate and maintain a creative thought while drowning in domestic duty, day in and day out. It may seem like a privileged struggle, but it’s a struggle nonetheless.
My goal as a filmmaker is to explore the full dimensionality of my characters’ lives with as much humor and empathy as possible, always with an eye to socially real circumstances. Male directors often talk about making movies by deploying sports and war metaphors (“It was like going into battle!”), but for me the process is really more like cooking or sewing – carefully assembling particular ingredients or elements, and then combining them into what is ideally an appealing whole. My approach to making movies is collaborative, inclusive and -- dare I bring up connotations of herbal tea -- nurturing. If that word only provokes a slightly contemptuous sneer, as the very topic of motherhood itself can and does, then the reasons for making this movie are more vital to me than ever.
– Katherine Dieckmann, Director
