Maggie's Plan - my Part II

Maggie's Plan  - Part 2

2015

R - 1Hr 38Min - Comedy, Drama, Romance

Greta Gerwig - Maggie 

Julianne Moore - Georgette

Ethan Hawke - John

Make sure you read the FIRST review of this, which was yesterday, the day before today, ya dig?
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As with all things that seem pristine and pressed together neatly, after sleeping on it, the next day you’re sure to find wrinkles.  You plant grass seed and you find a patch you missed when it all grows up or the birds ate while you were away.  You turn the perfect tomato over on the vine to find a hornworm firmly embedded in the fruit’s shady underside.

After sleeping over the Maggie’s Plan initial review, I’ll have to say something troubled me while I slept that I woke up thinking about.  It was something clear to me during the viewing, but not as consciously clear as the flicker of the celluloid (or dancing digits) on screen.  This is not to negate ANY of my previous comments actually, because it’s a different subject, offbeat from the filmic language of actor, writing, directing, lighting.  This is a touchy subject nowadays for most of the urban and intelligent, as well as a mundane or mute subject across much of the rest of the culture.  So while stepping carefully to not offend, this topic must be explored, after all, it is central to the central character, therefore it’s central to the entire piece and affects the whole zeitgeist of the thing, if you get me.

Maggie’s Quaker life. 

Late in the film, Julianne Moore’s Georgette character sums her up while seated across the table from her as “simple, a little stupid, loving, kind, open hearted, warm” (not an exact quote, I’ve only seen this once) and then went on to say “I really like you”.  She summed up our filmic understanding of the Maggie character to the core.  We absolutely love her, you can’t help it.  The natural charm, the very honest approach, the wide eyes, her love for children.  But ultimately we’re also led to what could conceivably be a darker part of her, her double-minded hypocrisy, she’s called a hypocrite outright by her friend, and manipulator, or intruder into the lives of others, which she did so very unproductively throughout, admitting in the end her plan was a fiasco and ill-taken, ill-conceived.  Yet we also believe it was naturally inevitable, just like the ending (no spoiler here right?).  

But her faith plays a key role, a master manipulative role that hangs on her like a necklace.  The key shot in the film surrounding her faith, we find, is empty.  (Ok this is a spoiler, so if you haven’t seen this yet PLEASE DO NOT read further).  She attends a Quaker service.  We see a simple sign that is like a parking sign, so we can assume that it has been there for some time, or at least people don’t make signs out of metal and bolt them to an iron fence unless they intend to do something long-term.  The very next shot is so telling of the state of her faith, and the state of the Quaker religion.  It’s the alter of her inner sanctuary.  She sits alone at the meeting, not one other soul in attendance. She has stated to John about her meetings, “I still attend”.  However we only find out late in the game of the story that her faith has an empty, silent component.  Because her faith is directly tied to her behavior, and her behavior is that of idealistic dreaming that leads her down blind alleys, then her faith and the admission of mistaken values become one in the same, or part of the failure.  Her faith becomes nullified in the face of another kind of idealism, being urban, modernist, and ultimately religionless.  She resolves to break away with that life of manipulation, hence her assumed dreamy idealism, therefore we assume that the religious adherence must pass away with it, or that it did.

Her skittishness of things involving her body, her purity, is essentially viewed as tied with this as well.  She refuses the offer of physical love from her sperm donor, attempting to have a child by herself.  In the person of Guy, played by Travis Fimmel, is a perfectly fine specimen of a man offering love and affection that she seems to so obviously need and want, but she wants the fruit of his labor in a plastic jar, one that she emphasizes is “sterile”.  She had to say that of course.  His offer is truly sweet, given the circumstances, and understandable.   She claims, “That’s too complicated”.  This also strengthens the character’s puritanical prudishness and distance from romance and the evident opportunities right before her, reinforcing what appears to be a wayward idealism once again.  Sexual fear is yet another symptom of a wayward religion.

It’s typical of the modern idealist in the new age of abstracting reality from circumstances, of situational ethics and tolerance, buzz words for universalistic correctness, speech sounding like sound blurbs from a newscast carefully censored prior to air time, to dismiss religion along with “old fashioned” words like purity and faithfulness by dragging a wonderfully innocent character like Maggie (an old fashioned name as well), through the sullies and mud pits of the sophisticated and existential modern conventions of parenthood.  In the end, what we have is essentially a soiled virgin whose misguided beliefs are found to be subjugated to the supposedly more elevated personal triumph of “the real world”.  It’s all done comically, and with great cinematic penache, but also there is this sense of tragedy, at least for me there was that sense, a sense of loss of something larger and more beatific than the immediate and pragmatic, an overreaching sense of guidance, of God.  I believe that this is a universal desire, a reality.  Beneath our sometimes stoic standup against darkness there is a prayerful wish for Eden to be true, that we could return to the garden, but alas we are awash in those muddy sullies.

For that reason I’m sure that Rebecca Miller did not attempt to dream up a way to undermine belief, but one cannot separate the wayward or misguided idealism from belief in Maggie’s character, they are one in the same.  In the end, we are left to believe that the character has undergone a great change, or shift, and has come to realize that like her Quaker meetings, her belief in a world that is pure and unadulterated is also empty, and cannot exist.  That I suppose, is the sense of loss that I have, while also triumphing in the belief that she does eventually find the direction that she truly was looking for in the first place.

In place of that vacuum, Rebecca gives us a hope that if we look directly and squarely at ourselves, as we are, not as we would “like” to be, we can find the substantial and fulfilling life, despite it’s flaws.  This does not negate God, but simply puts our condition in a real perspective, an honest one, one that can accept a giant jar of pickles.

- Agitatus