Mira Nair’s Hysterical Blindness & Glenn Close’s Albert Nobbs

To hear complaints with patience, even when complaints are vain, is one of the duties of friendship. — Samuel Johnson

Mr Page (Janet McTeer) and Mr Nobbs (Glenn Close) from Roderigo Garcia and Glenn Close’s 2011 Albert Nobbs

Debbie (Uma Thurman) and Beth (Juliette Lewis) in Mira Nair and Laura Cahill’s 2002 Hysterical Blindness

Dear friends and readers,

Why do I bring these two apparently unlike films together? Because 1) you must go see both; 2) I watched the second Saturday night on a DVD from Netflix (it is a 2002 film) and I watched the first Sunday later afternoon with Izzy at the Cinemart theater where it’s been hanging on in the tiny auditorium week after week, with crowds made mostly of women; and 3) both are moving thoughtful absorbing (riveting) films projecting a woman’s point of view. The second cheered me though it was sad; the first made me cry though it ended happily.

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Morning after coffee: Virginia (Gena Rowlands) and Nick (Ben Gazarra)

Mira Nair’s Hysterical Blindness. A woman wrote the screenplay (and original stage play, Laura Cahill), a woman produced it, women did the production and costume design. It didn’t have an ending but sort of suggested life will go on – the way woman’s memoirs do.

It was I suppose very sad, about people with such limited visions – understandably. Two lonely young women, friends, living in New Jersey who want to be valued and loved but have nowhere to go but a local bar. Indeed in US society where money buys education and all is exclusionary, it makes sense to me that NYC across the bridges is another world. Who would hire them? How would they pay the rent? they have no understanding of higher culture and would lead the same lives on the other side of the Hudson.

The mother of one of them, Virginia, her husband deserted her and the daughter years before, was played by Gena Rowlands, a long time ever working character actress. Debbie suffers from hysterical blindness; she cannot socialize easily and who could in such a cold society. Beth, her best friend, is an unwed mother supported by her family (lucky in that for work-welfare would crush and punish her severely).

The two cling to one another and finally the daughter and mother: a moving scene is of Debbie coming home to Virginia, falling asleep next to her, starting to cry, and Virginia rolling over to hug and hold her.

Beth has a daughter who is learning to be such another as her mothers (Debbie too) are

The mother does have love come to her, Nick, but the older kind courteous man dies of a heart attack. At the funeral she meets his son and will not meet him again ever probably.

Nair was probably in her mind contrasting this to Indian society where if families are oppressive they are at least around. The romance for the younger generation, is Debbie giving Rick (Justin Chambers), a blow job; he stands her up when she makes dinner, but if she is not too much of a bother, does not demand any commitment he’ll lay her late at night. Romance for Beth is being ecstatic if the bartender gives you a drink and offers to talk to you after hours, but you must obey what he wants to do, that is stay in the bar, and be where he wants to be. If your daughter phones you, you must give her up that night. After all, Beth does not; when her daughter calls her mother and Beth’s mother demands she return home (or the money’ll be stopped), Beth’s conscience wins out.

I don’t know why it cheered me. Maybe it was the tone of the movie, that Nair cared, that she loved these characters and gives us a movie of togetherness at the end. The mother buys some new furniture with her job (she works in a diner). We are shown how generations are following one another.

I recommend it. It’s vastly superior to Nair’s Vanity Fair and I think better than her Namesake for its nearing depths of loss much deeper probed in front of us. Nair provides an insightful commentary on how she made the movie, techniques, thoughts …

It seemed to help lift my spirits Saturday night around 3 in the morning.

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Mr Nobbs out walking with Helen Dawes (Mia Wasiknowska, the latest Jane Eyre too)

I just loved Albert Nobbs. I was told it was a kind of Gosford Park to Downton Abbey, but I think it quite different from both, even though again we have a plot-design which contains an upstairs rich and privileged group of people (a boarding house, hotel run by Mrs Baker [Pauline Collins], a mean cold bullying woman, who at the close of the movie after Mr Nobbs’s sudden death from heart-failure or aneuryism, finds his hard-earned tips of a lifetime and uses them to re-open her hotel) and a downstairs group of servants (this time realistically observed, biting back sometimes, needling, squabbling and resentful, but sometimes supporting one another against sorrow, exploitation, hardship). Have I said enough in those parentheses to show the difference?

Albert Nobbs is based on a 19th century novella or story (which the other two are not, they are modern concoctions). By George Moore, it tells of a young illegitimate woman, shy, timid, but with a loving heart, who is cast upon the world when her mother dies and her allowance in the convent is stopped, and then finds herself all alone when the woman who had been caring for her (Mrs Nobbs) dies. She cannot find work easily as a gentlewoman with nothing so she disguises herself as a male and is hired during some huge crush time as a waiter. For the rest of her life she has lived in this disguise, an utterly repressed life.

Into his (her?) life comes not only a lovely chambermaid, Helen, but a painter. He is forced on Mr Nobbs — Mrs Baker insists Mr Nobbs allows Mr Hubert Page to sleep in his bed as Mrs Baker has nowhere else to put him. Turns out Mr Page is a woman too, but one comfortable in her skin, very kindly, strong. Here is the wikipedia article which will give you the story.
It has been rewritten twice: once by Istvan Szabo (as a play) and again for this film.

It reminded me of Gogol’s Overcoat. Mr Nobbs is just such another vulnerable suffering soul, all dreams, no harm in him whatsoever. He is not mocked by this world though, just utterly used indifferently — until Mr Page comes along. It’s Janet McTeer as Mr Page who makes the difference. Her generous soul and body: she is married to a real (biological) woman, Cathleen (Bronagh Gallagher) and in them we see a loving couple. Cathleen pretends jealousy or is jealous when the name of Helen comes up as Mr Page is attracted, but it’s a joke. Mr Page will never leave Cathleen. Indeed everywhere we turn in this film downstairs we see quietly there a soul who would be kind, live a genial rich comfortable life with someone else if only they were permitted and get as close to that as they can when no one is looking.

And that’s what we see in Hysterical Blindness. Debbie and Beth and Virginia and Nick get as close to loving friendship as they can when no one is looking.

In Albert Nobbs we see the doctor making love to Mary, a chief older maid (easily jealous of Helen, but tries to protect her from Patrick (Sean Green) who, fired mercilessly from one job by lying weazles into the hotel and then proceeds to become Helen’s lover and the father of a coming baby. He promises to take her to America but we all know that’s a song. Mr Nobbs loves her too and wants to make her the center of a dream tobbaco shop he is saving for. Another potentially pleasurable soul, the aging Sean, often hungry, often wishing he could have some brandy too, is played by the inimitable Mark Williams (between him and Janet McTeer I felt I was back in the 2008 S&S — for he was John Middleton there and also Mr Beebe in the 2007 Room with a View).

The finest line and moment in the film comes when the doctor looking over Mr Nobbs now dead body, opens his (her) shirt and finds he was a woman. His chest looks so tightly kept in, it hurts. Says the doctor: why do we live this way? Why so much misery inflicted on ourselves. The next morning the physician leaves the hotel with Mary.

The touching scene was of Alfred at last in women’s clothes (Mr page’s Cathleen’s — made by herself). The two are walking across a beach and suddenly Alfred begins to run, skip, revel in the air and her shawl and dress. She feels herself. As Mr Page, Janet remains looking like a man, but now in a woman’s dress. This was of course a transvestite film too.

A strikingly real scene occurs on the stairs. Patrick has begun to fight with Helen again; she has said he is not going to take her to America, she knows this, and he becomes enraged. Mary gets into the act to protect Mary; soon Sean is there, and then Alfred rushes out of his (her) room to attack and protect Helen. He offers again to marry her. The scene is shot at an angle slightly apart. This is how the family groups can get.

Alfred Dobbs is a kinder movie or story than Hysterical Blindness because the men (the powerful group) are more than indifferent in Nair’s film; they are rough and seem without much feeling. The upper class at the hotel has some bitches (Phyllida Law is again playing one – she was the mean Mrs Austen in Miss Austen Regrets) but others mean no harm, are just luxuriating in the life the system allows them. One moment Mrs Moore suddenly overcome with pity for Mr Nobbs somehow wants to comfort him, but is stopped by her irritable selfish husband. We don’t see any of the men in the bar really seek to comfort anyone.

And the ending is providential. It’s a 19th century story. The terrible crisis is typhoid which kills Mr Page’s wife. But then Mr Page is set free so when Mrs Baker rehires Mr Page with MR Nobbs’s money and Mr Page finds Helen has had her baby but is being paid nothing by Mrs Baker (the threat is Mrs Baker will tell Helen is not married and the child be taken away to the poor house) and lives in fear. Mr Page looks and says well, we can’t have that, can we? We see glimpse him (or is it her) cuddling the baby and Helen standing close. They will marry and this by law secure a haven where they too out of sight can have some kindness and support.

Hysterical Blindness was just about competely made by women, and Alfred Nobbs about women as men as well as women. In this film They are much kinder men than men.

Alfred Dobbs made me want to read some George Moore. I never have. I associate him with the great George Gissing whose New Grub Street, The Odd Woman, and travel books I’ve ever loved. Moore is a kind of Zola, and his Esther Waters is one I shall try to get to. There is a film adaptation. And I have on my computer a beautiful MP2 file of Janet McTeer when young in Mary Webb’s Precious Bane. I had not realize how good she could be at smoking: Patricia Hodge is past mistress of the long well-made manufactured cigarette, Janet McTeer of the rolled slender stoggy.

She does a man very well

It goes without saying how marvellously well-acted and shot these films are, Hysterial Blindness all modern bridges, streets, washed out colors for air, Alfred Nobbs disguises its origins as a play-novella and use of sets by its close concentration on the characters themselves, medium-shots and pairs and interminglings of characters predominate, in such a cold hard world everyone lives within an inch of everyone else and they are all so aware of each move the other makes.

For me a memorable shot of Hysterical Blindness was of a cat Beth keeps in her house. Since each shot costs money, she (I assume pussycat is a she) is there to show the non-human animal world is caught up here too.

I am not able to show a favorite still of Alfred Dobbs; I’d like to have one of Mark Williams, but can say one does not realize how often the poignancy of Alfred’s face is put before us and thus we are all the more glad Helen’s baby, named Alfred, will have Mr Page as his mother-father.

Here she seeks a building she can dream she can afford to make a shop with her name above it

Ellen