Audience Member
Spoilers: Dirty God reminds of 1968's "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter," as Alan Arkin's affliction was deafness and muteness, as he tried to find a way, reasons to keep on going, fighting loneliness, and ultimately failed. This lower-socioeconomic British woman, played spot-on by Vicky Knight, a real find who even sang a song in the poignant musical score, was lonely because her boyfriend's acid attack on her damaged her face, neck, chest, arms, back and hands, scarring her, maybe more psychologically than physically. Her own mother was caring for her daughter, as she largely tried to find happiness, clubbing and doing drugs with "friends," even screwing her best friend's boyfriend, and trying chatting and masturbating in her bedroom with a guy on a sex website. Then at her low-paying call center job, she finally explodes on a co-worker who is mockingly watching her sexting routine on the internet, with coworkers on the job, and she hits and jumps him. The coup de gras of it is when she saves thousands to get work done on her scarred face in Morocco off of a website and goes there after paying upfront for the surgery. Right, no clinic, no doctor, no surgery to fix her face. She goes to see her ex-boyfriend who had thrown the acid on her get justice for his crime in court. We aren't wild about her, as she is not big on self-control, self-discipline, and is just flailing, trying for some satisfaction, comfort, happiness. In the end, she has pretty much soured on the idea of looking for a male to give her what she needs. After bailing her thief Mom out of the police station, the three generations of females seem content just to be together and to build a life together. She even wins a trophy for call center employee of the month, and tells her sometimes estranged Mom at the cop shop that she could hit the cop who ransacked her home on the head with her trophy, and both laugh. It's frequently hard in Brit films understanding the lower-class accent and jargon, but we get through it. Call it a slice of life of surviving the slings and arrows of outrageous fate with its difficulty and pain. An indy feeling film that plays well, eliciting in us both disdain and sympathy if not empathy for her. The train wreck of her environment pointed her toward disaster from her start, it seems, but scarred, she is still standing at the end, which makes this hopeful. The critical implication is the destructive effects on women of class stratification as well as male chauvinism and paternalism. The dirty god she sees is parallel to the lesser god that saw Marlee Matlin as a deaf woman, which she is in real life, win an Oscar for 1968's "Children of a Lesser God." Turning the pain, anger and frustration into lemonade is the real challenge for the physically impaired, and some rise to the challenge, while some don't, as Arkin in "Lonely Hunter," who ended his own life.
Rated 3.5/5 Stars •
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
02/07/23
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Audience Member
Hoi allemaal, Echt een hele leuke maar ook zielige film. Sacha heeft volgens mij heel erg haar best gedaan. De muziek is heel mooi.
Rated 5/5 Stars •
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
01/23/23
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Audience Member
Daring and moving, with a first class lead performance.
Rated 4/5 Stars •
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
02/10/23
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Audience Member
not too bad, but kinda dragging on
Rated 1.5/5 Stars •
Rated 1.5 out of 5 stars
02/08/23
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