Your opinion on the protag in Maria Full of Grace

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  • Your opinion on the protag in Maria Full of Grace

    I happen to think she is one of the most loathsome characters to ever carry a movie.

    Spoilers.

    Abandons her (ungrateful) family.
    Leaves a decent (if boring) job in an impoverished country because she "didn't get along with her boss."
    Decides to become a drug mule for the cash.
    Smuggles a huge amount of narcotics in her body, which is also carrying a fetus.
    Deceives the sister of a fellow mule who has died/been murdered, in order to have a place of refuge from drug dealers.
    Uses the money from her drugs to set up shop in America, having returned them to the owners, who of course will poison hundreds of willing addicts with them.
    Chooses to stay in the U.S. as an illegal alien, without much in the way of prospects besides a similar job and situation from the one she left.

    I can't wait to hear this character lauded by the Oscar presenter when Catalina Sandino Moreno's Best Actress nod is announced.

    I'm not looking to get into a political pissing contest; I just think it very curious how words like "brave" are being tossed around in light of how this character is actually presented in the movie.

  • #2
    SPOILERS

    Wow, did we see the same movie?

    She doesn't blithely quit her job. She asks to go to the bathroom because she's sick. The boss won't let her. Which leads to her yakking on the roses, which sets the boss off. (In fact, wasn't she fired?)

    She doesn't agree to smuggle drugs so she can buy a new wardrobe. She does it because she needs money to support her worthless, ungrateful mother, sister, and sister's baby. Not to mention her own baby.

    She doesn't really abandon her family. She just chooses not to go back to them. She chooses to stay where her baby can have a much better life, like the one her friend's sister has. And I think it's pretty strongly implied that when she has money, she'll still be wiring some home to her family, even though they're ungrateful sh|ts.

    She briefly deceives her friend's sister because she's afraid the drug dealers will kill her. But she does come clean and tell the truth.

    Uses the money from her drugs to set up shop in America, having returned them to the owners, who of course will poison hundreds of willing addicts with them.
    Key phrase there: willing addicts. She's not forcing these people to use drugs, and if they don't use the ones she brought, they'll find it somewhere else. She's supposed to care more about these anonymous junkies than herself, her baby, and her family back home? If she doesn't, she's a bad person?

    Chooses to stay in the U.S. as an illegal alien, without much in the way of prospects besides a similar job and situation from the one she left.
    No, her situation won't be remotely similar to the one she left behind, because now she's in a big city in the U.S. instead of a tiny hole in Colombia. In her position, given the opportunity, you can't know you wouldn't make the same choice for yourself and your new child.

    Seriously. I can't believe you saw the same movie I did. I think you've got the character almost 100 percent wrong. I don't know if I'd call her brave, but I think this 17-year-old girl found herself in an impossible situation in a tiny village in Colombia, and I don't think she did anything that justifies calling her a bad person, let alone "one of the most loathsome characters to ever carry a movie."

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    • #3
      Just the kind of discussion I'd hoped for, refried.

      But this part....

      I think it's pretty strongly implied that when she has money, she'll still be wiring some home to her family, even though they're ungrateful sh|ts.
      It's only implied in one scene, when the sister talks about what a great feeling she had wiring home money the first time. I got the impression that this was an add-on to make viewers think that might happen.

      And yes, the people will consume the drugs willingly, but her bringing them in funds the industry in her country that is part of the reason for the conditions there. And I disagree that the "key" part of the equation is that the people who use her drugs do so willingly. A person who gains from, and with the knowledge of, the misery of that many others, is not sympathetic to me.

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      • #4
        Maria was hot.

        I found her extremely sympathetic for many of the reasons outlined by refried.

        And because she was hot.

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        • #5
          just a perfect day

          I for one, am grateful for Maria's courage, because if it wasn't for people like her I would't have my daily fix. Gracias!

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          • #6
            Maria

            Had same reaction as iembalm for much the same reasons. Saw it on DVD and my wife stopped watching about 1/2 way into it because of its unsympathetic lead.

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            • #7
              Re: Maria

              Would she have seemed so unsympathetic to you if she'd been a man, or would you have not noticed? Curious.

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              • #8
                No difference

                It wouldn't have made any difference. Had she (or he) been a person who had no option but to agree to carry drugs - to support her starving family, to get a needed operation for her dying mother, to feed orphan children, etc. - she/he would have been far more sympathetic. By the title, I assumed going in that she was a woman who was "full of grace" who did something desperate in order to achieve a greater good. That wasn't the case.

                I didn't feel there was much of a character arc. Had she started as she did and became a better person along the way or had she started "full of grace" and lost it during her travels, she would have been more interesting to me - even if more or less sympathetic.

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                • #9
                  Re: No difference

                  It's only implied in one scene, when the sister talks about what a great feeling she had wiring home money the first time. I got the impression that this was an add-on to make viewers think that might happen.
                  Well, duh. Sorry, but that scene didn't happen by accident. It was in there to show that this woman Maria so badly wanted to be like enjoyed sending money home to her family -- so we would know that Maria would do the same thing.

                  Why else would it be in there?

                  I guess they could've hit us over the head with a scene where Maria went to the Western Union office to wire money home. They could also have hit us over the head with a scene where Maria says "I just can't go back to my little village in Colombia. I can't have my baby there when America's medical facilities are so much better. I can't raise my baby there when she can be a naturalized U.S. citizen and have a million opportunities I never had." And then maybe more people would've understood why she stayed in America.

                  Or they could've done what JMather suggested and say she had to get money for her mother's operation (or maybe some less cliched reason) instead of just having her think first of her own baby. But guys -- this isn't a Lifetime movie of the week. It's subtler than that, and much better for it.

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                  • #10
                    Perhaps a movie about proud, ethical, upstanding American citizens doing proud, ethical, upstanding American things would be more to your liking.

                    Protagonists aren't always heroes, and heroes themselves can be antiheroes to varying degrees. Not everything in this world is black and white and what is "loathsome" to some can look differently to others standing in a different location/country/social strata. Just like one man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist (and one man's war hero is another man's murderer), the war on drugs looks far different to a poor Columbian girl without options than it does to an American.

                    Movies about people getting swept up into the global narcotics web for a variety of real and complicated reasons - something that happens thousands of times a day all over the world - are obviously for the birds, and those who pull off inspired acting work in said movies aren't worthy of reward.

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                    • #11
                      Well put, Shark.

                      Part of the movie's whole point was how the drug trade drags in people who simply have no other options. Maria didn't "decide to become a drug mule for the cash," for god's sake -- she did it because that was the only way out for an uneducated, unemployed, broke, pregnant teenage girl in a tiny Colombian village.

                      Interesting that we've seen countless movies like Blow and Traffic, which feature lead characters who really do get into the drug trade for money and thrills -- and yet this 17-year-old Colombian girl gets labeled "one of the most loathsome characters to ever carry a movie."

                      Maybe if she was less brown....

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                      • #12
                        Re: No difference

                        Rock on, Sharky... well said.

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                        • #13
                          Scarface was just a wacky, misunderstood party boy. Maria is a loathsome harpy out to destroy her unborn child and poor, hapless American weekend warriors.

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                          • #14
                            Nobody else thought she was hot?

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                            • #15
                              hot

                              She is very hot. She's toned up a bit too since then, so he's even hotter now.

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