A Map of the World

source: A Map of the World

This film was such an amazing concept; a fantastic lead role for a female actress. I have no qualms with Weaver or Moore in this film but I do with the director. This film had a lot of potential to explore what happens when a person undergoes life-altering experiences in a short period of time, whether it is due to a situation that is within or out of their control. Throughout the film, the character was on the edge of greatness, and yet it never quite happened. There were at least 4 moments in the film that were headed this way but the viewer simply ends up feeling like it was all an anti-climax. It is a shame, but perhaps a similar film will be made in the near future where the themes explored in this film actually reward both the viewer & do the characters justice.

Here's how "A Map of the World" gets its title - Alice (Weaver) drew a child's colorful version of a map of the world, with a big rainbow, when she was young. The "map" makes a couple of appearances during the film, and is part of the last scene when Alice narrates using her map of the world and her family of four in an analogy. I rate this film a solid "8" of 10. There are no special effects, character development is relatively deliberate, and the complete storyline unfolds gradually, much like "Lone Star" does. Weaver's and Strathairn's characters remind me of the two leads in "Limbo" - good people who are just barely holding things in their lives together. They are big-city folk who decide to buy a rural dairy farm and "work it" with their two small girls. A couple of tragedies enter, and their lives are forever changed. The film deals with relationships and the human resiliency that allows us to adapt. CAUTION -- SPOILERS FOLLOW -- Things start to unravel when Alice, a grade-school nurse, allows a friend's (Theresa, Julianne Moore) little girl to wander off and drown in their farm pool. The girl actually dies a bit later in the hospital, only kept alive by machines. This happens about the time Alice is going half-crazy dealing with the brats at school, and especially the kid who seems to always be sick, and who once spit out medicine into her face, and she slapped him in angry reaction. Days after the girl dies, Alice is arrested, but for "sexual abuse" of the little brat at school. Two other children later join with complaints. At first it seems that Alice looks at her imprisonment as a "vacation" from the daily grind of taking care of her kids and the farm. She asks Howard (husband David Strathairn) to bring her books, she reads a lot, stays to herself, hardly asks about the kids. It starts to look like she may really be guilty, and inside a very sick person. What's really going on, she feels that she has earned her "punishment" because of letting the girl die, but is not worried because she is innocent and will get out only in a matter of time. Meanwhile, Howard is having a very difficult time on the farm, cannot raise the money to bail Alice out, all the friends and neighbors assume she is guilty and snub them. He eventually sells the farm, moves to a small apartment, gets Alice out of jail, they hire a good lawyer, they expose the hoax, clear Alice, Thresa become her ally again, and Howard ends up working at the state driver license office. The story ends with Alice, Howard, and their two girls sitting at a round table, and Alice's narration about the 'map of the world." Weaver does a marvelous job, and her character is detestable at times. The DVD is clear but simple, no 5.1 soundtrack, very limited extras, but overall one of the better films that deals with life's difficulties and triumphs. A mature film for mature viewers.

Something is very off about this movie. It was very difficult to feel sorry for Sigourney Weaver's character (despite her innocence) due to her bizarre behaviour, and other people in it equally acted out in strange ways which felt directly at odds with the situation they were in. Despite not being a bad film by any stretch, I can't quite put my finger on why I didn't think much of A Map Of The World, but it was definitely overlong by a good half-hour and the children in it were very annoying... and alas, we saw a LOT of them. There's prison scenes, drama at home and even a final courtroom sequence, but nothing really connects and it just all seems unconvincing and unmoving. Finally, there's a part where our main family, nearly bankrupted by lawyer fees and trying to find the resources for bail, decide to sell their farm and relocate to the city. This means getting rid of their cat... and the glib way they treat losing a family member made me lost whatever sympathy I had for them in the first place. Which, considering how weird they've been from almost from the first shot, wasn't a heck of a lot to begin with. 5/10

This movie has great promise but falls apart. The performances are excellent but what the actors had to work with is questionable. About a quarter of the way thru the movie the characters begin to behave in ways that are undeveloped, unexplained and unattached seemingly to the rest of the movie. It's almost as if they each start to act in a movie of their own. Weaver's character is particularly at fault. In addition there are events that are unexplained - one example of several is when the thing happens to Weaver with the black women it is never made clear how it happened. Maybe we don't need to be told and are expected to draw our own conclusions but why isn't her husband told? All up, very disappointing.

It is a pity that "A Map of the World" was not better directed. It had it all, a wonderful story, brilliant actors but the movie somehow lacked guidance. In spite of this problem, Sigourney Weaver was nothing short of magnificent, her performance did deserve an Academy Award nomination. It is astonishing how well she plays roles that range from comedy to drama, always doing it beautifully. If "A Map of the World" were to be directed by somebody else, it would have been a masterpiece.

This film could terrify some. It is certainly gripping, but it's carried by superb performances by Sigourney Weaver and Julianne Moore. The only film I can think of that is quite as moving is another Sigourney Weaver film, Death and the Maiden. The tone of the two is very similar, but there is more hope in this outing. It still isn't something for the kids. But if you love acting, if you love to see real emotions rather than concocted attempts to feel, then watch it. And remember to keep your own Map of the World.

This film has a big problem with having too many huge conflicts in one film. Conflict #1 - Character has a horrible family and life in general Alice here has two uncontrollable hellions who, when they aren't screaming about how much they hate her, they're almost getting themselves killed. Her husband is unaware of his surroundings to the point of apparent brain damage. Dude, there is a pot boiling over inches from your head, don't you smile at her all innocently like nothing's amiss, what is wrong with you? Alice is the only responsible person in the house and drags everyone's weight, whether it be her children's abuse or her husband's uselessness, like a beast of burden. To top it off she has a terrible job as a school nurse that she hates as well. All of this is pointing to a nervous breakdown on her part, perhaps a coming-around of her husband and children. This conflict alone would make a solid narrative with a satisfying, if frustrating, structure. Does this happen? No, because... Conflict #2 - Child in Alice's care drowns herself Wow. Um, that came out of nowhere. I see that the reason the kid dies was because A. nasty bitch daughter demanded that Alice leave them alone to find a different bathing suit and Alice like a doormat does as she's told, and B. useless dad was too busy screwing around with the car to see the tiny child wander past him. That is a heap of unnecessary stress on an already stressful story. While this conflict alone would be good as it's own movie - exploring guilt and grief and a broken friendship between two moms - it's pretty spoiled by an already gasping-for-breath stressful setting. Okay, maybe this can be salvaged. Conflict #3 - Alice is wrongly accused of molesting one of the students What. The. Fudge. Wait, this has nothing to do with the previous two plot lines? Why is this here? ANY of these three conflicts would be enough to cause a nervous breakdown in a normal person and deserve to be explored individually. Lumping them on top of each other like a precarious ice cream cone does none of these serious issues justice. Alice isn't strong - she's the butt of a sick cosmic joke. She's the universe's doormat and she doesn't have the guts to demand better. Three stars for Julianne Moore.

When I finished this film, I was sure that it ran over two and a half hours. In reality, it was only 125 minutes. That reveals something about the pace. If you can imagine a worm burrowing through granite, you have the idea. Actually, the story was a good one. The problem was the screenplay and the direction. This is a story of Alice Goodwin (Sigourney Weaver) a city girl who has moved to the country so her husband could try his hand at farming. However, this is no Green Acres. Alice is having difficulty coping with country life and her relationship with her two children. One day she is minding a friend's children and leaves them playing with her own children momentarily to put on her bathing suit. Upon returning, she discovers one of her friend's little girls missing and after a desperate search finds her face down in the pond. Subsequent to this tragic accident, Alice is accused of child abuse by another child who claims she molested him in her duties as school nurse. The two incidents together turn the whole town ugly as they assume she must be guilty. The story is an in-depth character study of Alice and her struggle to cope with both her guilt and innocence. The guilt is her feeling of responsibility for the little girl's drowning and the innocence is the knowledge that she is not a child abuser. Usually I enjoy complex character studies with deep conflicting emotions, but this one left me exhausted. This is not because of the story, but because of the script and the presentation by Director Scott Elliot. Far too much time was spent on scenes that weren't really interesting or relevant. The dialogue often seemed inconsistent with the characters, especially in Howard's (David Straithairn) case. The lawyer was made to look like a buffoon. Having seen Arliss Howard in a number of other films, I know he is a capable dramatic actor so I have to assume this was the director's interpretation of the character. Sigourney Weaver has received much critical acclaim for this performance, but I found it to be somewhat uneven. She was superb in parts, especially the parts where she was playing the strong woman trying to hold it all together. However, she seemed to struggle with the vulnerable parts, as if she wasn't comfortable with the character. I realize that part of the point was that Alice wasn't comfortable in her own skin and used a lot of defense mechanisms to cope, but Weaver seemed unnatural and forced in these scenes. She seems to have a lot tougher time playing weakness than strength. In that regard, Julianne Moore's performance was much better. Her breakdown scene in the woods was compelling and heartrending. David Straithairn was well cast as the self-sacrificing and supportive husband, a role with which he is well familiar. However, he too seemed uncharacteristically tentative. When veteran actors have so much trouble giving confident performances, one has to wonder if there was a disconnect between the actors and the first time director. Overall, despite some good performances and a solid story, the whole project just didn't come together and dragged ponderously from scene to scene. I rated it a 6/10. For patient viewers only.

This is a tough task. I want to explain why this film is very worthy of a viewing, without giving any spoilers away. It's not the most incredible film ever made, but it's so much better than many films made in 1999. It's beauty is organic, in that from a good story/novel comes a very finely honed and skilled script. A story that manages the odd laugh in some very dark situations. A script that gives us the kitchen sink drama of folk attempting the American dream, the tense drama that sometimes has you wondering whether you like that person you loved a minute ago, and some very normal, human days. Then you take the immensely talented Sigourney Weaver, David Strathairn, and Julianne Moore (along with other mentionables such as Richard McMillan and Aunjanue Ellis) to deliver the dialogue, and we already have something worth watching. I could attempt to interpret it, and tell you what it's all about, what it all 'means' but, in essence it's a story about some people dealing with some extraordinary events in their ordinary lives. What we learn, or take away from it is down to the individual watching. The direction, and photography is flawless, with some subtle colour themes running throughout the movie. Greys and pale blues, set with rust and bright orange as the story progresses; fields and concrete, hope and despair. The story is linear, but very rarely the camera cunningly takes us to different times and places. The soundtrack is just fine, and while it, and the film sometimes verge on being a little saccharine (which it manages to avoid in the main), what we see here are some very talented people making a good solid film. A lot of the time what you think is about to happen next, often does. But be ready for a couple of surprises, and even if what happens next is what you suspected would occur, just watch some people acting their socks off! I only found this film because the DVD was on sale for half a dollar, and bought it purely on the strength of Sigourney Weaver and Julianne Moore, who have never let me down. They are a couple of the best actors of their generation - I only have to point you to Snowcake, The Hours, or Magnolia for solid proof of that. Apart from their obvious acting abilities, I particularly applaud their lack of vanity, and dedication to getting things right. If you think you're into good film, and want to see all of them before you die, then you really should watch this one.