Every last Thursday of a month, Thursday Movie Picks series returns with All in the Family Edition. This week, the running theme is all about Mother-Daughter Relationships (Biologically Related), as an exact opposite of February’s topics. FYI, Wandering through the Shelves Blog still hosts the series and… you’re invited. Visit this page for the details.
As for this week, I’d like to highlight some troubled mother-daughter relationship in movies fueled by mothers’ obsessive ambition… and social pressure. Oh, fortunately all the mothers in the movies I picked are all single mother; it must have been difficult to be one, therefore, things might happen.
01. Carrie (1976)
Piper Laurie portrayed Mrs. White, Carrie’s enigmatic, fanatic mother; while Sissy Spacek portrayed Carrie, the bullied girl with supernatural ability. Things had never been easy for this mother-daughter; the neighbors alienated them, and Mrs. White even alienated themselves from society. Her strict faith was the trigger of Carrie’s disasters; the thing is, she only did that to protect Carrie from the evil power that once engulfed her. This mother-daughter relationship is a more bitter irony in Brian de Palma’s version of Carrie.
02. Black Swan (2008)
As a former dancer, Erica (Barbara Hershey) loved her daughter’s passion in ballet. Yet, things went sour when Nina (Natalie Portman), the daughter, got involved in Black Swan. The whole movie was actually a character study about Nina along with the juxtaposition of her role as the White Swan and Black Swan. The character study focused on how she got connected to people, and how her relationship with her mother juxtaposed the relationship between of The Swan Queen and the Queen from the performance was completely awesome.
03. Beyond the Lights (2014)
She couldn’t be a star like she had been in Beyond the Lights without her mother’s interference. Noni Jean (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) was a hot new celebrity who won Billboard Music Award even before she released an album; but it was all her mother’s—ambition, obsession, and stardom. Actually, the romance is the first course of this film, but without the mother-daughter seasoning, it was tasteless. Trust me, this is the mainstream contender of Begin Again.
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So, that’s a wrap: all my picks are there. Hit the comment, please.
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