Tour de force performance by Glenda Jackson in what for me, personally, will be the best of her career. If the script and plot are lacking in continuity sufficient for some viewers, Jackson riveted my attention with her character Maud's commitment to her life. Please note she is not committed to vague "life"; she is committed to *her* life, and she is a warrior. Diminished by everyone except a young granddaughter, ridiculed by police, patronized and scolded by her doctor, kept at arm's length by her absent son, the viewer finally asks the question advanced old age begs to be asked: Does it really matter if she's suffering from a neurological malady or not? Isn't her elderly self--shrunken, humble, afraid--by virtue of age socially acceptable as a punching bag? Doesn't being a punching bag incapacitate all of us? Elizabeth IS missing.
While the plot was pedestrian and confusing, and--this is not a spoiler--there is an element of M. Night Shyamalan's editing tactics to make one of this film's two endings a true surprise, *story* is unimportant. The viewer gradually realizes Maud is the only thing about the production that counts. Her loneliness is all the more terrifying because it's ignored or trivialized or disdained in some way--small or gaping--by everyone. Only Elizabeth and Maud's own ironic love of human memory imbue her with dignity and reasons for self-respect. She is her own raison d'etre because the world finally (as for all of us) does not give a damn.
For me the take-away was Maud defies diagnosis. If she has been claimed by illness, it's a spiritual illness caused by an epidemic much older than Covid and with no cure on the horizon. The "mad woman" was right seventy years ago, and the mad woman is right in 2019. When Maud stands at Elizabeth's security box and does a math problem I couldn't complete as quickly as this precious old woman completes it, so that she may venture into a place where (as far as she is aware) she may face her own death, I knew the moral of "Elizabeth is Missing." Only those who dignify you until the end are the people whose absence truly counts--whether the end is sudden, as a young beauty gone missing in 1949, or prolonged and bitter, as Maud's is in the internet age. And so Maud's final words are correct, not impeded by her condition, and more profound than even her valiant daughter realizes. Whether you put the emphasis on "Elizabeth" or "Missing," those words repeated like a mantra in Maud's final question signify that... Elizabeth is Missing.
Stunning, breathtaking work of art.
While the plot was pedestrian and confusing, and--this is not a spoiler--there is an element of M. Night Shyamalan's editing tactics to make one of this film's two endings a true surprise, *story* is unimportant. The viewer gradually realizes Maud is the only thing about the production that counts. Her loneliness is all the more terrifying because it's ignored or trivialized or disdained in some way--small or gaping--by everyone. Only Elizabeth and Maud's own ironic love of human memory imbue her with dignity and reasons for self-respect. She is her own raison d'etre because the world finally (as for all of us) does not give a damn.
For me the take-away was Maud defies diagnosis. If she has been claimed by illness, it's a spiritual illness caused by an epidemic much older than Covid and with no cure on the horizon. The "mad woman" was right seventy years ago, and the mad woman is right in 2019. When Maud stands at Elizabeth's security box and does a math problem I couldn't complete as quickly as this precious old woman completes it, so that she may venture into a place where (as far as she is aware) she may face her own death, I knew the moral of "Elizabeth is Missing." Only those who dignify you until the end are the people whose absence truly counts--whether the end is sudden, as a young beauty gone missing in 1949, or prolonged and bitter, as Maud's is in the internet age. And so Maud's final words are correct, not impeded by her condition, and more profound than even her valiant daughter realizes. Whether you put the emphasis on "Elizabeth" or "Missing," those words repeated like a mantra in Maud's final question signify that... Elizabeth is Missing.
Stunning, breathtaking work of art.