Mother’s Day

Julia Roberts sits in a café star­ing into the void. Her back is straight and her eyes are pinned dead ahead. There’s no smile. Her lips are light­ly pursed, but her facial expres­sion is eeri­ly neu­tral. She resem­bles an android whose pow­er cell has expired. She wears a gin­ger toad­stool hair­style and, per­haps under­stand­ably, is alone at her table.

This scene appears in the end cred­its bloop­er reel for Gar­ry Marshall’s cel­e­bra­tion-themed port­man­teau pic­ture, Mother’s Day. It’s a brief moment that allows us to slip the surly bonds of fic­tion and grab a glimpse of hard doc­u­men­tary real­i­ty. This is the real Julia Roberts at work. This is The Craft, unvar­nished and genuine.

In the back­ground, a long car­go train is pass­ing through and we can see that she’s wait­ing – atten­tive­ly, pro­fes­sion­al­ly – to deliv­er her line. It’s the job of a crit­ic to analyse and decon­struct the gaze of the cam­era, what­ev­er it may cap­ture. In this moment, we must also deter­mine the gaze of the actor – what is she look­ing at, and why is she doing so with such inten­si­ty? Cin­e­ma is a manip­u­la­tion of truth, but because of that we must look deep­er, beyond the sur­face illu­sions, to what is real­ly there.

Even the great­est actors can­not con­ceal the ethe­re­al soul, often clear­ly vis­i­ble though the eyes. Roberts is think­ing about her cue, but the sequence also sug­gests a women think­ing about her life. Maybe she’s con­sid­er­ing banal arrange­ments for when the day’s shoot is over: How am I get­ting home? What will I eat when I get there? How should I pre­pare (if at all!) for anoth­er day on set with Gar­ry ​“The Gong” Mar­shall? But maybe, just maybe, we’re see­ing some­thing more pro­found­ly spir­i­tu­al – an unwit­ting­ly cap­tured moment of divine, self-ques­tion­ing grace.

Maybe Roberts is con­sid­er­ing her next line, repeat­ing it inside her head so she doesn’t for­get it. On the evi­dence of the pre­ced­ing dia­logue, chances are it won’t be par­tic­u­lar­ly mem­o­rable. Maybe she’s think­ing how she got to this moment. How did this hap­pen? Will the film be worth­while? What will it do for my career? Will there be any artis­tic val­ue in it what­so­ev­er? And if it is awful, will it pass as camp? Will it play well on the late night TV cir­cuit and amuse peo­ple on long-haul flights?

Roberts’ con­cen­tra­tion is final­ly bro­ken when she acknowl­edges the absurd length of the train. She laughs and cracks a joke. It’s the only thing close to a gen­uine­ly wit­ty moment in the entire film. The gam­ble of not hir­ing four writ­ers (humans, pre­sum­ably) and allow­ing the actors to improv the whole film was low, low stakes. You can’t get low­er than rock bot­tom, so let ​’em have at it.

The moral here is that there is some­thing very beau­ti­ful about still­ness and silence. Instead of putting togeth­er anoth­er sap­py, day-glo atroc­i­ty about the joys of being/​having a moth­er even if they are ran­cid­i­ty xeno­pho­bic and/​or deceased, Gar­ry Mar­shall should put his envi­able Rolodex to good use and just cap­ture actors in a state of Zen-like con­tem­pla­tion. Offer a path­way to a high­er truth that can­not be expressed in some kind of down­home, hand­i­ly pithy wis­dom bomb or soul-melt­ing cameo appearance.