Norma Rae - 1979
Jan. 13th, 2020 03:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sasha_featherI hadn't seen Norma Rae before, so checked it out from the library. Instant favorite.
Sally Field won an Oscar for this role. And indeed, there is something about this performance that is sublime. Norma Rae is unapologetic. She knows who she is and she does what she wants. She likes people, especially men. In her small town, that makes her the subject of gossip. She decides to break it off with the married man she's sleeping with, and he hits her. "If you lie with dogs, you're gonna get fleas," she says to Reuben, her new friend, who sees her outside the motel just afterwards.
Reuben is a union organizer from New York, in town to try to start a union at the textile mill where the majority of the townspeople are employed, including Norma Rae and both of her parents. When Norma Rae and Reuben are recruiting for the union, they traipse through a cow pasture. Reuben trips and falls into some cow manure. "It's only grass and water, Reuben," Norma Rae says.
This film knows how to take its time and show us relationships. We see Norma Rae's strong relationship with her father, her friendship with Reuben, her care towards her children, her relationship with a new love. We see her interacting with the bosses at the mill, where she is unafraid to speak her mind. There isn't much music, which creates space for silence, and for the sounds of the mill. In the most dramatic scene, these sounds play a major role.
Highly recommended.
Content notes below:
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.
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Reuben deals with anti-semitic language and attitudes.
Norma Rae is arrested for being a union organizer; afterwards Reuben tells her some stories of worse things he's seen.
Brief intimate-partner violence, mentioned above. Normae Rae tells the story of her first husband's death, the result of a bar fight.
Norma Rae's father dies while working at the mill.
Sally Field won an Oscar for this role. And indeed, there is something about this performance that is sublime. Norma Rae is unapologetic. She knows who she is and she does what she wants. She likes people, especially men. In her small town, that makes her the subject of gossip. She decides to break it off with the married man she's sleeping with, and he hits her. "If you lie with dogs, you're gonna get fleas," she says to Reuben, her new friend, who sees her outside the motel just afterwards.
Reuben is a union organizer from New York, in town to try to start a union at the textile mill where the majority of the townspeople are employed, including Norma Rae and both of her parents. When Norma Rae and Reuben are recruiting for the union, they traipse through a cow pasture. Reuben trips and falls into some cow manure. "It's only grass and water, Reuben," Norma Rae says.
This film knows how to take its time and show us relationships. We see Norma Rae's strong relationship with her father, her friendship with Reuben, her care towards her children, her relationship with a new love. We see her interacting with the bosses at the mill, where she is unafraid to speak her mind. There isn't much music, which creates space for silence, and for the sounds of the mill. In the most dramatic scene, these sounds play a major role.
Highly recommended.
Content notes below:
.
.
.
Reuben deals with anti-semitic language and attitudes.
Norma Rae is arrested for being a union organizer; afterwards Reuben tells her some stories of worse things he's seen.
Brief intimate-partner violence, mentioned above. Normae Rae tells the story of her first husband's death, the result of a bar fight.
Norma Rae's father dies while working at the mill.
no subject
Date: 2020-01-13 10:16 am (UTC)This sounds wonderful.
no subject
Date: 2020-01-13 06:38 pm (UTC)Yep!
Date: 2020-01-13 05:10 pm (UTC)Also, Sally Field owns the role.
Re: Yep!
Date: 2020-01-13 06:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-01-14 07:02 pm (UTC)