Oh Mother!
directed by Sandra Dametto and Sara Morley
What is a mother? What does "mother" mean? Sandra Dametto and Sarah
Morley's short documentary Oh Mother! takes a brief glimpse at four women
who became mothers in three different eras. The film looks in part at how motherhood
is a transformation; with the bundle of joy, a mother also accepts a new identity,
a difficult job, a shift in priorities, and a socially defined role. Part of what
Dametto and Morley ask is - what is left behind? How much of one's personality is
swallowed up in motherhood, how much adapts, and how much reemerges?
Strains
of big band jazz lead into the first segment about a woman's first experience of
motherhood in the 50s - an era when motherhood was an unchallenged, unshakeable foundation.
"I just really worked at what I did," explains Helen Bambic-Workman, who,
struggling for the supposed fulfillment of motherhood, eventually came to see it
in some ways as a trap, as servitude. For her, the days and hours were filled "waiting
on everybody." She tried to shake off the traditional attributes of motherhood:
resisting cooking, refusing to iron - and insisting her children call her by her
first name, not "mom". The road to discovering who she was and what she
really wanted didn't begin until her marriage dissolved and the children had left
the nest.
Part
two profiles artist Katja MacLeod Kessin's experience of motherhood in the 70s, when
Kessin was a child herself, not yet out of high school, and part of the early wave
of teen mothers. "I don't know an adult life without being a parent,"
Kessin confesses. For her, it wasn't motherhood per se that rankled, but rather
the way she had been raised. Kessin describes how stasis, silence, and restraint
pervaded her strict German upbringing. Children were best seen and not heard. As
she learned how to be a mother, Kessin decided she would do parenting differently.
This also became a theme in Kessin's paintings as she strove to raise children (with
her partner) her way, not showing them an all-powerful mother, but one who was human,
and occasionally errs.
Part
three shows a less conventional couple (indeed, the subjects of much media attention
in Montreal) facing the age-old challenges common to all new parents. Erica Courvoisier
and Deborah VanSlet decided to have a child, and the two new mothers of baby August
are shown, with great affection, as they find their way through the experience of
parenting.
This final segment, while demonstrating how the possibilities of lifestyle and choice
have exploded for the 90s mom, shows also how some things remain true and immutable.
All types of relationship and parenting are possible, but a baby still exerts its
own mandate: feed me, care for me, sacrifice for me - and VanSlet at times seems
a little overwhelmed by the new experience. A comment from Bambic-Workman could apply
to everyone profiled here: "you don't have a child, a child has you."
Oh, Mother is a little film, a small attempt to show some views of motherhood
outside the norm, and how the individual can emerge from the mother - either reasserting
identity as the kids grow up, or through decisions made at the very start.
There's a slight feeling of a thinly-sampled survey, here, though. What we've seen
so far would make an interesting first part to an ongoing series ("Chapter I: Women in the Arts: their take on motherhood. . ."). The women
profiled, too, are mere snapshots: one wonders how much can be revealed and how true
a picture we are seeing in the brief fifteen minutes or so spent on each segment.
Oh, Mother is available at Cinéma Libre, 514-861-9030
- Neil Brouillet