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Rating:  - Cotton Mary
Very well written...a good movie for people who have lived through the British era in India and not of pure Indian decent. The struggle to find ones place between the Pompus British who over took India and the Anglo Indian wanting so much to belong.
Rating:  - Cotton Mary - Speaks!
Servile, cunning, ingratiating and conniving... these adjectives pretty much sum up Mary's character for me. Sexually prudish, yet ambitious for some social standing, she sees her opportunity come in the form of a newborn while working as a nurse. The mother is British, the baby premature. The mother is not producing milk, and Mary takes the infant to a crippled wet nurse where the baby is eventually restored to health. Lily, the mother, offers her a job as an ayi in the house, which Mary of course seizes upon. Eventually she poisons the mind of her mistress against her tried and longstanding man-servant, such does her influence become.
On the other hand, her mistress, dope that she is, is susceptible to all of this. Which I found to be a frustrating part early on in the movie. Rest assured her stupidity will be corrected later in the movie. By the time that it is though, I was almost starting to marvel at Mary.. She is one twisted lady - though her mental extremism is largely the product of colonial history combined with her own culture and personal background.
Mary is not a likable character - she's a character, all right, but likable probably isn't one of the words that'll come to mind when you recall her. And yet this very well-done character study of a movie wouldn't have been the intriguing piece of work that it was without her. The movie never asks you to like her, but what she is says something. And no, I wouldn't call this movie satire. Just as I wouldn't call "A Passage to India" satire (which, BTW, is an excellent movie - even if you didn't like this one). There was only one scene which made me wonder, and that was when the new butler (a relative presumably) makes his entrance. We see him pulling flowers out of some flower pots (plant and all). Later, Mary scolds him "I just told you to pick some flowers". That one scene was almost spoofish (of drunken relatives?). But overall I didn't feel this was satire. If it was, what was being satirized? British colonialism against the backdrop of their religion? and some of the people who partially embraced it? the mindset of a nation that allowed them to set up camp there in the first place? No, this wasn't a satire for me, although this movie is very revealing on those topics. Christianity, for example, seemed to fuel Mary's prudish ultra-conservativism - however, she herself was born of a mixed marriage of British father and Indian mother.
This movie was a lot more engaging than I thought it would be. Of course, you spend a lot of that time being appalled at Mary's gall, and wanting to give her "madam" a swift kick! Which may be why this got low reviews from some. Still, shot in south India, the scenery is stunning and based on that alone, it'd be hard to give this picture anything less than 3 stars. Add to that, very fine production, first-rate acting and a story that left me somewhat moved, or at least in awe of the way her twisted mind worked. And while the way she is is obviously an extreme, there's something in it, some act of repression that seems to touch on something found in most cultures and societies or attitudes, for better or for worse.. No this was an interesting story. Cotton Mary said something.
Rating:  - Very Subtle...BUT DEFINITELY worth a serious look...
I was somewhat dismayed to read the negative reviews of this movie. First, we MUST take into account the movie-making team responsible for this film, a team working together, historically, on so many films of similar theme over the years:the British in India. Their effort is unique, this turn, because the action rolls a scant seven years after the last British Viceroy left India to its own self-rule... after a two hundred year "guardianship". What was left in the wake of those two hundred years? ... and please remember the team crafting this movie. The dynamics... the dramaturgy of this movie is secondary, and serves, only, to illustrate history. The central figure, CottonMary, a bi-racial woman, more Indian than "White", but believing herself to be British to the bone... a sentiment NOT shared by the decaying British colonials (holding tightly on to their quickly-vanishing past in India), is foiled, constantly, in all attempts to claim the identity she feels to be her own. The British regard her as an outsider to their world, fit to be only a servant, and her fellow Indians are at odds with her claim to be more British than Indian and are equally at odds with what they see as her affectations, underscoring her efforts to distance herself from them... her Indian counterparts. Too frequently, do they feel her disgust for their Indian ways. And so in the end, the central figure is "no where", neither here nor there, eshewed by all... totally isolated, and pays a terrible personal price for trying to claim her identity as she sees it to be.
I do understand that this film is subtle, but for any viewer at all familiar with M-I's body of work, this film, as part of an oeuvre, is very important, as it captures the wreckage of a significant chapter in Indian history... it is the denoument of that experience, and an entirely fitting and defining "end" snapshot of a two hundred year chapter that shaped the sub-continent.
Rating: - Not a block buster but a very fine movie
But tell me why that cover on the DVD/Video sleeve? Yes, there is an extra marital but nothing like THAT cover. I found the movie absorbing, beautifully filmed and interesting historically/colonialism.
Rating:  - Preposterous story but fine acting and cinematography
This 1999 Merchant-Ivory production is set in India in 1954. A wealthy British woman gives birth to a small baby. As she is not able to breastfeed, the hospital nurse, named Cotton Mary, who proudly proclaims that she is half-English herself, makes the woman dependent upon her and moves into the rich woman's house as a servant. Cotton Mary never tells the mother how she is feeding the baby, but the viewer watches Cotton Mary take the baby in a boat each day to visit her own crippled sister who is a wet nurse and lives in a house which the British refer to as an "alms house", where disabled and aged elderly people live.
The plot is ridiculous. How can a mother show no interest at all in how her baby is being fed? Certainly a tiny baby needs to be fed more than once a day. And certainly, they had baby bottles and formula in 1954. The woman's husband, who is a philandering and uncaring journalist doesn't care either. And their older daughter who is about eight years old keeps the secret of these clandestine feedings.
There's more to the story of course. There are the snobby British colonials and the legacy of colonialism. There is the trusted Indian servant who is forced out of his job because of the lies of Cotton Mary. There is Cotton Mary's niece who has an affair with the husband. But mostly the film is about Cotton Mary herself and her descent into mental illness.
The story is awful but the film still had a few things going for it. One was the great acting job of Madhur Jeffrey cast as Cotton Mary. Another was the setting and excellent photography that transported me to a time and place in India that Merchant-Ivory does so well. But the story itself is preposterous and much too long and boring.
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