Pieces of a Woman — Analyzing The Diamonds in The Rough
Rated R / TW — sexual content, brief drug use, graphic nudity, domestic violence.
“Sometimes, resonance can be so powerful, it can bring a whole bridge down.”
Martha and Sean, a Boston couple toeing the finish line to becoming parents, are tested by a grueling tragedy that forces them to confront an all-consuming trauma individually and within their family. Pieces of a Woman takes perhaps some of the most visceral emotions imaginable and throws them on our screen for a sedating yet biting two hours and six minute run time. If you can bear the unbearability of it, this film will also challenge you with the weight of its stars’ performances and the thoughtfulness of its cinematography.
Pieces of a Woman is based on its writer and director’s personal experiences together, Kata Wéber and Kornél Mundruczó, respectively. While this film gives a much needed voice to the very common loss of pregnancy, it’s narrative structure suffers at times, due to the varying levels of distress that seem to compete with each other. What never loses here, is the ‘there are not enough buzz words to describe’ 23 minute single shot of the home birth. One can wonder if the end of this piece, if you will, of the movie would have sufficed as a short film on it’s own.
Over the course of the film, we see these characters struggle in a multitude of ways, making each fragmented moment as retraumatizing as the next. It is almost as if there is too much pain here, leading to Martha’s seemingly dissociative state and Sean’s explosive vulnerability. Although some sequences are more effective than others, there is an undeniable beauty in the symbolism that weaves itself through the agony that is explored through each act of the film.
Each “act” or portion of time in this story is depicted through the motif of a bridge being built. Where some may find this trite, the metaphor isn’t abandoned and does remain an important aspect of Martha’s journey to the very end. As the film begins, we see the haze over the water as the two ends of the bridge seem so far apart they may never meet in the middle.
September 17th
The first chapter of this film is undoubtedly the strongest, and not just for the “wow” factor of a long single shot. What is most impressive about this scene is how we as the audience are introduced to this couple and how they communicate at this point in their relationship. We also see how this small amount of time leads to a much longer 90 minutes and 8 months of that relationship completely upending itself.
What Vanessa Kirby brings here to Martha is a humility that isn’t seen much on screen when it comes to pregnancy. Martha groans like an animal, belches repeatedly, says “I’m going to be sick” for nearly twenty minutes and I feel like I’ve suddenly experienced first hand what being in labor might be like, and that it is okay to not love every second of it. There is a quiet but necessary humor in those moments, as Martha tells Sean and her stand-in midwife Eva how awful this (labor) is. It’s much easier to make pregnancy and labor look like a difficult dream come true, but this feels like a reality we’re somehow allowed to peer in on. It’s believable, and that is what makes the trauma hurt so heavily.
Martha’s reluctance to do everything that Sean and Eva suggest as her contractions intensify shows her as a woman who is trying to just get through this birth and meet her girl. I can appreciate that there isn’t a glorification of “the beauty of birth”, but more the acceptance that birth can be ugly and repulsive. Not all women are basking in the joy of the miracle of life. We see a hint of that in Martha’s stoic face she puts on and maintains even as time passes.
Shia LaBeouf as Sean is a grounding force as the father-to-be. He has mastered the quiet noise of his role here, holding Martha together and providing what looks like the type of support you would wish for in your own home birth. Even from the quick mention to coworkers in the opening shots that “Martha’s fine, she’s always fine,” provides a glimpse into how he views her, with love and unwavering belief in her strength.
The Martha and Sean we see here give us the full range of their emotions and a preview of what is to come, even if this is the most cohesive part of the whole. I could barely blink during this sequence, often wondering if there was a cut I missed but then again was distracted by Martha weaving herself around their home as they prepared for the baby’s arrival. As the midwife checked in on the baby’s heartbeat throughout the contractions, I was holding my breath awaiting the inevitable tragedy I knew was around the corner. The distorted sounds on the monitor of a baby struggling to breathe were carefully crafted, adding to the already white-knuckled atmosphere. Martha finally gives birth and holds her baby girl, giving us the utmost heartbreaking look between two new parents in the split second of relieved joy. Sean pulls out a camera (Chekov’s gun- check) and captures that joy as quickly as it dissipates. In a mere minute of gut dropping realization, the midwife tries to resuscitate the baby who is turning blue, as Sean runs out to meet the approaching ambulance.
Cue the title card for Pieces of a Woman thirty minutes in, and that breath you were holding that feels almost wrong to exhale.
October 9th
Not even a month has passed since the loss of her child, and Martha returns to her job, red jacket, heels and postpartum gauze underwear complete her uniform. Martha here shows the aforementioned stoic yet distant face, one that only a woman trying to process trauma could muster up. While she may appear cold or despondent, she perhaps depicts the strength she wishes to possess.
Martha wanders her way through a grocery store, and again the symbolism of growth is evident in varying sizes. She haphazardly grazes the fresh fruit, delicately picking one up before placing it down and moving to the next. She settles on a single apple, a fixation that we see develop but don’t quite understand for a bit. This sequence is incredibly poignant when we think of the pregnancy tracking apps that compare the growth of a baby to small fruits and vegetables. Whether or not this was intentional, it drops more breadcrumbs to the audience that Martha moves and acts intentionally, and that her silence isn’t as bitter as it might first seem.
The loss of their baby is unfortunately the talk of the town, as her mother’s friend confronts her in the grocery store and gives her unwanted thoughts on the trial of Martha’s midwife. It seems less of a consolation and more of a chance for other people to project their opinions on how Martha should be dealing with her loss. While in the car, Sean attempts to communicate with Martha, and we hear the first mention of his addiction issues and the years of sobriety he has under his belt, six years, five months and three days to be exact. She is shockingly cavalier in their conversations, potentially a sign she is just unsure of how to manage it all.
November 7th
Although this chapter can feel like a filler, there are some notable moments of how the family seeks closure, if that is even a possibility in these circumstances. There is a mistake with the spelling of the baby’s name on a tombstone, leading to Martha abandoning the situation altogether. This could be her point of denial, or acceptance, depending on the direction in which you view it from. Martha appears to have a grasp on the reality of this grief but everyone around her is still catching up.
Sean’s personal struggle gets more depth here, as he paces through the graveyard with a cigarette in hand, and the relentless grandmother Elizabeth, (Ellen Bustyn) on his heels. The tension between their dynamic is evident from the start of the film, but amps up as the family continues to express conflicting means of coping.
In another thwarted attempt to communicate, Sean begins to break more, desperate to be let in emotionally by Martha. He reads as feeling clearly cut out of the relationship and mourning process, as Martha self isolates. There is yet another punch in the gut as he sobs to Martha that he misses their baby. We see this conversation through the doorway, both on opposite sides of their emotions, with Martha’s strong, unwavering face and Sean’s downward spiral beginning.
December 21st
The bridge is still being built, Martha and Sean remain contrasted in their coping mechanisms, and their relationship continues to unsteady itself. Sean is seen to be having an affair with none other than Shiv Roy, aka Martha’s cousin Suzanne, who is also a lawyer the family plans to use in the trial of the midwife. It’s a tad heavy-handed. Martha lingers in the space of a silent observer in her world, as time seems almost slower for her. On public transport, she maintains her believable face of strength, watching the families, mothers and children around her. What is remarkable here is that Kirby does not play a weepy mother who cannot hold herself together, but rather the woman who feels that way on the inside but actively fights against it to steady herself. Her newfound accessory, a half eaten apple, gains more traction here. Martha bites into a small seed and saves it, and I for one could not stop thinking about what she was doing.
Martha is packing up the nursery in their home when Sean delivers another efficient one-liner of “Why are you trying to disappear my kid?” It is Labeouf’s delivery here, alongside the majority of his dialogue that is incredibly impactful. Although we’ve seen in done before, it is still effective to show the two halves of this relationship mourning the same loss in varying ways. Sean’s own issues start to take over as we see him relapse in real time, which albeit predictable, is understandable in the situation.
What fits in neatly here is the dichotomy of their vices. Sean secretly pours a bottle of liquor into his water bottle, guarding it with his body so Martha doesn’t see. In the next shot, Martha grabs the half eaten apple core she says she doesn’t want and slyly holds it close to her. While one fixation is definitively healthier, the representation of how grief manifests is striking. It is those small moments of such detail that sprinkle themselves throughout and keep things in coherence.
In what is one of the other most talked about and intense scenes, Sean initiates sex with Martha and it is extremely uncomfortable. She is reluctant at first, until Sean grows quite aggressive. This is hard to watch especially with the recent allegations against Labeouf coming to light, and some of those actions are right here in front of us. One can only imagine the torn levels of intimacy between a couple after the loss of their child in such a tragic way, and maybe this scene teeters on gratuity. As for intimacy, we also see this scene travel into the bedroom where we are watching through the doorway, almost as if we, or anyone else aren’t supposed to be seeing this at all. It still manages to be astute in it’s exploration of their intimacy, which was so beautifully portrayed in the opening act and feels entirely different here. This heavy chapter ends with an inconsolable Sean, sobbing and muttering indistinctly to himself on the bridge, alone.
January 13th
Martha looks to be finding a peace inside herself, although there is still hurt and turmoil looming over her head. There is an entrancingly tranquil scene of Martha after purchasing a book on sprouting. She sits quietly in the kitchen, cutting up the tons of apple cores she has saved and with that same delicate intention, she places each seed on a cotton pad, humming to herself. This alludes to a type of self-soothing, or therapy for her to regain control over the growth of something besides herself. It is a moment of calm in the chaos.
A quick expository scene with her sister keeps the story continuing, that Martha is still detached and quit her job, Sean returned the new car they got, their mother is eroding, and relationships are strained in every direction. The only really important thing here is the mention of the roll of film found in Sean’s car that she dropped off to get printed. Chekov’s camera, second check.
Sean is still having an affair with Suzanne, but in the midst of it, he drops what is his most potent monologue of the film. He gazes upon a painting of a bridge on the wall of her office and delves into the “big story behind this bridge.” In only a few sentences, Sean explains resonance, and it’s continuation of the metaphor that is the bridge in this story. And while that bridge can mean many things, Sean emphasizes “sometimes, resonance can be so powerful, it can bring a whole bridge down.” Maybe this metaphor smacked some people in the face, but it feels like his point of acceptance of his life at this point.
Yet another uncomfortable scene between Martha and Sean ensues as she returns home from a party where she kissed another man. It feels less like we are supposed to be angry with either of them for cheating, but more so to emphasize the distance that has grown between these two people and that the loneliness, the sense of coping alone might be the breaking point for them. Martha decided, against her promise to Sean, to donate their daughter’s body to the university for science. She smokes a cigarette and he yells at her, calling her a clown and a liar, before throwing an exercise ball right at her face and storming away. As fast as the shock hits, she burns a hole into the plastic, her feet rest on the deflating ball. The sound of the air escaping resounds into the next few shots of the household interior, showing the decay of everything around them from the dirty dishes to the wilted plants, no longer cared for.
February 5th
Through another series of lengthy tracking shots, the entire family hits a breakthrough, or making a breaking point. There is the awkward small talk of a family trying to find literally anything else to talk about besides the trauma of the last few months but it’s apparent that the tension is almost begging to be cut through.
The pressure explodes between the mother and daughter argument that follows. There is such a disdain in Martha as she addresses her mothers view of her as a failure, but we get an even deeper glimpse into that through Elizabeth. Ellen Burstyn, as the mother who seems to want retribution the most, erupts with a strong monologue about motherhood from her perspective. As Martha fights to remind her that this is about her body, a fight too familiar for most women, her mother sees this loss through the need for justice. Her words are ice cold. It’s a classic waif mother monologue, where Elizabeth details her own mother’s struggles and it is aimed to get Martha to sympathize with her point of view. While the performance is strong, it edges towards the muddiness of the varying people telling Martha how she should be feeling and acting throughout the film and its effectiveness can be disparate.
As if we did not have enough reason to want to knock Elizabeth off her high horse, she then offers money to Sean to leave and never return. In his own words, again with the clever one liners, he knows there is no longer a place for him in Martha’s life as he is “a scrabble word, boorish”. Martha drops Sean off at the airport as he heads back home to Seattle, leaving just his hat behind with her in the car. He cries quietly while pushing through the doors. Painful yet timely, this felt like the moment of Shia leaving our screens, perhaps forever.
In a simple yet compelling scene to close this chapter, we see Martha on a run in the snow. She stops to gaze over a hazy river, seeing the bridge through the fog, perhaps another suggestion of the progress she is slowly but surely making. She takes a careful peek at the apple seeds she is tending to, collects photos of Sean off of the fridge, and leaves the water running from the tap over the dirty dishes, still unattended to.
March 22nd
The clouds have dispersed over the title card, marking the Spring could bring clarity, or perhaps that the film still has another 30 minutes to fill. Martha enters the trial of the midwife, Eva, for malpractice. This storyline is mentioned throughout the course of the film, yet it falls flat in comparison to the more paramount aspects of this story. The run time lingers here, but we are graced with Martha’s strained and poised recollection of the home birth as she takes the stand on trial.
In an agonizing, exasperated breath, Martha’s fixation is realized. When asked how did she feel when holding her baby, Martha looks on as if she is going to split in half and chuckles softly, “She smelled like an apple.”
During a break in the trial, Martha goes to the store to ask if there are the aforementioned photographs her sister dropped off to get developed. In a type of reprieve (thank you, Chekov), Martha looks at the film and sees the images of her holding her baby daughter. We know that this is a monumental breakthrough for Martha, as she holds the picture of her baby and her face unwinds into a smile for the first time. She returns to trial to give an almost breathless, exhausted address to the courtroom that she does not in fact blame the midwife for her daughter’s death. A long gaze to her mother hints at an acceptance between them, or at the very least, an end to their disagreements.
At home, Martha checks on her apple seedlings and finds a single sprout. Again, we have a serene sequence of her taking the cotton pads off of each section and seeing all of the sprouts and new growth. She steps back to look at them with not quite a smile, but her face softens.
April 3rd
The bridge is finally completed, and a more hopeful Martha stands upon it, the very bridge that Sean said his daughter would be the first to walk across. Martha tugs Sean’s hat onto her head, pulls out a small urn, and slowly lets the ashes cascade out and over into the water. Closure isn’t always attainable, but this may be what it means to Martha, to release even some of the trauma, with a small part of Sean still connected to her.
The screen brightens up, and birds chirp as we are taken through a field of dandelions, following a young girl. She climbs up through an overgrown tangle of apple trees. Martha is hidden by the vast trees, having built herself back into a place of safety and comfort.
We have our ending, tied up neatly . And while this does not represent the entire multitude of women who have faced this pain, (70% to 75% of all conceptions will end in pregnancy loss), it provides a glimpse into the trauma, and a glimmer of hope for an individual’s progress. We do not know what happened in that time between the end of the court case and the apple tree her next child climbs, but we can take a breath for the first time in 2 hours, the same sigh of relief I would expect Martha has eventually found in herself.
Rating: 7/10
Please be mindful of the content warnings for this film as it may be very triggering for some viewers.
