MAUDIE (2016) by Aisling Walsh

“This is a remarkably assured movie, through and through. Walsh and cinematographer Guy Godfree have taken care to make every individual shot a thing of beauty. But the artfulness always acts in service of the emotions, which in the end become both inspiring and heartbreaking.” – Glenn Kenny, RogerEbert.com

“Maudie celebrates the capacity to appreciate the world that lies framed within a window, to see the cruel beauty of the everyday and transform it into art. This wedding of craft and imagination also describes Walsh’s textured filmmaking, connecting frame after frame of gorgeous vistas to an emotionally rich female-driven narrative about art’s healing power and the potential for redemption in everyday acts of grace.” – Thelma Adams, The Observer

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My English teacher in high school told me to always avoid the use of clichés when writing. I’m sure that if I went to film school, the teachers there would say the same thing about making movies. So why do we have so many films about “tortured artists” who have to battle [choose one or more from: disability/mental illness/poverty/institutionalized discrimination] for the sake of their art? Was Plato on to something when he said that art is a form of “divine madness”? Or are artists with all their foibles really just like us regular folk, only better at art? One could hold up Maud Lewis as an example of the latter. Yes, she suffered from debilitating rheumatoid arthritis for much of her life, and her life partner wasn’t exactly a wellspring of emotional support; nonetheless, she gracefully accepted the hand that she was dealt in this poker game we call life, and happily spent her free time painting simple pictures of cats and cows and sailboats. Despite all of this (or maybe because of this), she became a national treasure.

Pablo Picasso once famously said, “It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.” Sounds like poor Pablo could have taken some lessons from our Maudie on how to be a real artist.

You can stream MAUDIE for free on CBC Gem.

Happy viewing!