Game of Life: Humanity: 1 / Immorals: 0
Last night I looked forward to watching a new Netflix thriller/mystery I Care A Lot. It had some of my favorite actors Dianne Wiest, Peter Dinklage, and starring Rosamund Pike...
My Dear Friends & Family,
Last night I looked forward to watching a new Netflix thriller/mystery I Care A Lot. It had some of my favorite actors Dianne Wiest, Peter Dinklage, and starring Rosamund Pike.
Basically it’s a story of a woman Marla Grayson (Pike) who is in the very profitable business of defrauding seniors. Her racket is guardianship: identifying powerless retirees, having them falsely declared mentally incompetent and herself appointed their legal conservator and then defrauding them of all their assets which by some not so mysterious ways ends up in her bank account. This happens through the collusion of doctors, nursing homes, and oblivious judges. It’s a really juicy plot.
I began watching and somewhere as I was approaching the halfway mark of the film I began to get a queasy feeling in my stomach. At the beginning, her success record of 100 per cent was challenged by only one son concerning his mother. He wanted to see his mother. He questioned her need for Guardianship. Marla chewed him up and spit him out. She was unstoppable.
She makes a mistake by targeting the mother of a crime boss but rather than show fear, she ups her game and no matter what the threat (and there are many consequential threats) pursues her dream of being so rich she is untouchable. (Put forth in the movie as “The American Dream”)
I didn’t stick around to see if she succeeded. I was sick to my stomach watching the amorality that filled the script and screen. Not one character in this film had any and I mean any redeeming features… a dark world that only got darker. Why do I want to watch people whom I don’t give a fig for succeed as they decimate whatever and whoever is in their way without any consequences.
As for me, I immediately reached for an antidote to the poison that had been spewing from my television for over an hour… I definitely stayed too long at the fair. I turned to Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple. Plenty of really villainous types but somehow always caught in the web of their own making.
To put salt my own wound, today I caught an interview with Rosamund Pike from an article in USA Today. Her statement made me wince.
I think it maybe reflects the fact that people need a dose of what this film serves up at this time. I think it's that kind of dark, irreverent humor that we're all a bit in need of.
~ Rosamund Pike
For the life of me... Where was the humor?? Definitely not the Marx Brothers' Duck Soup. Of course, as an actor I totally understand the thrill of being chosen but I find her statement unbelievable and irresponsible.
I certainly don’t recommend you see it, but if you have seen it I'd love to know what you think.
My philosophy has always been what goes around comes around. Time is not in anyone’s hands… but my belief is… in the game of life, The Decency and Humanity Team: 1 / The Amorals: 0
Of late, we have been sorely tested… but ain’t that what life is all about? It isn’t easy. It is difficult. And it definitely isn’t fair. Our work is never done. We have occasional breaks from the onslaughts… a walk in the woods, a picnic by the lake, a good book, a great movie, friends and families… and then we are right back in it again: snow and ice in Texas.
My beliefs say we always know what the right thing to do is… we are always challenged to do the right thing. Sometimes we can. Sometimes we can’t. But we know. That is what separates us from the beasts…
Right??? Of course, right!!!
Love, Sally-Jane