No guys, I need to stop and talk about something in this movie and how fucking revolutionary it was; something that I haven’t seen in a movie before or since.
This is a movie about a kid who leaves her birth family.
Not a kid who find that they have a secret lineage or something that allows them to find their ‘true family’ - this is a movie about a kid whose true birth family is made up of bad people. So she gets out. And that is played as the right thing to do. She isn’t punished for it or made to feel bad about ‘abandoning her family’. There isn’t an underlying ‘but they’re your family and you have to love them’ or ‘they’re your family and they love you even if they don’t show it well or do hurtful things’ message of the kind that I see OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER in media. Matilda gets out and lives happily ever after because of it.
We need a million more movies like this to counter the metric shit ton of movies that directly counter this message.
#sometimes the family you start with isn’t a good one #but you can find your own #family is not absolute #blood is not absolute
I like how when she wants to be adopted, her mom says to her “I never understood you”. And the whole quote, but that line in particular, makes me cry every time because at the end she finally understands. It’s not that she meant to be a bad mother, it’s that she didn’t understand what was best for Matilda even though she tried in her own way. And when She asks for the pen, she’s doing what she thinks is best and She’s not gonna let cops or her husband or anyone get in the way of that.
This made me think of a friend with a really shitty dad
(via thesescarswillkillyou)
Posted on May 28th at 10:16 AMHas a total of: 635612 Notes
