There are movies about grief and loss and childhood trauma… and then there’s The Horde. Directed by Luna Karmoon, the picture is about two hours and six minutes of quiet, glittering devastation that will have you reaching for her phone to call her mother as soon as the credits roll. Sho. That’s also terrible. That’s not meant as an insult. Carmoon even called herself “disgusting, animalistic, and carnal” when describing how she was covered in saliva, sweat, and blood on set. I didn’t talk to the cast or staff about it.
The film follows a young Maria (Lily-Bo Leitch) and an older Maria (Thora Lightfoot Leon) and unfolds across two timelines, which at times blur together. Little Maria lives with her mother Cynthia (Hayley Squires) in a house that is literally a hoarder, but for Maria and her mother it is a fantastical home that serves as a “catalog” of their love for each other. It’s a (and stinking) world. . The older Maria spends her teenage years with her adoptive mother Michelle (Samantha Spiro), but never lets go of her childhood and what her mother taught her (like ignoring showers). I could not do it. But everything changes when an older boy named Michael (Joseph Quinn) comes to stay at Michelle’s house, forcing Maria to (finally) face the trauma of her past.
One woman’s trash is another woman’s treasure
There’s a scene early in the movie where Cynthia asks little Maria to take home the dirty foil she wrapped in her lunch box, but she thinks it’s the most important, deadly job a person can accomplish. behave as if. The floor of Maria’s childhood home is covered with overstuffed garbage bags, mice run around happily, and tin cans hang like Christmas lights. Cynthia pushes her shopping cart through the streets of south-east London, rummaging through bins and collecting things like sidewalk chalk. She and Maria use it as face paint.
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Yes, it’s filth, but for little Maria…it’s all magic. It’s clear that Shin loves her daughter more than anyone else in the world, but it’s hard to watch a child grow up in these conditions. I don’t know anything more than that or any more. The house scenes account for some of the moments in the film that make you want to look away, but don’t. There’s something about Kamoon’s direction and Nanu Segal’s breathtaking cinematography that keeps your eyes glued to the screen.
How can I solve problems like Maria?
Grief stays with us and trauma changes us. Frankly, the older Maria stinks – and the people around her always have no problem saying so. Beyond her greasy face and her dirty clothes, her energy is almost rat-like and feral, with her anger and bitterness perhaps stemming from her separation from her mother many years ago. There are hints of new emotions.
But the only person who doesn’t really seem to care is Michael – who’s pretty creepy himself. It is Michael who brings Maria back to her old life of her childhood and rekindles the sense of magic and wonder associated with filth and dirt. Now, thanks to Maria, something childish is rekindled in him, and he becomes addicted to the feeling.
He and Maria transform into children around each other, giggling, fighting, eating stones and dirt, and pretending to be bullfighters. Michael knows there’s something “wrong” with Maria and knows that her strange antics are coming from a dark place. And he likes it so much that he begins to forget about his pregnant girlfriend, Leah (Ceara Coveney). He likes that Maria is clean, her well-groomed, polite, and her opposite of Leah, who is a “nice” older girl. The result is a toxic, sweaty, bizarre sexual relationship that culminates in a body horror scene that would make David Cronenberg proud.
“It’s beautiful and it’s ugly, but we all exist that way,” Carmoon told GamesRadar+ during last year’s Venice Film Festival, where Horde won three prestigious awards. “Some people show it to certain people, and some people go their whole lives without showing that kind of ugliness to each other.”
I love you, custard
Without giving too much away, the ending of The Horde is one that’s left up to interpretation. I saw some reviews calling it a soothing moment and others describing it as confusing. Not every movie has a moral or moral to it, and Karmoon isn’t trying to teach us anything. This is not a fable or fairy tale. In Fleabag, Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s character deals with the death of her best friend by saying, “I have so much love for her and I don’t know where to put it now.” I don’t know,” he said. At the heart of this grotesque, surprising and moving photograph is love, pure love. The love that a mother and daughter share knows no bounds, and no matter the circumstances, no matter how long someone is gone, it will never go away.
Michael’s love for Maria is not real, she is his “crazy fairy dream girl”. She represents what he wished he still had, who he was before he became a responsible adult. But the love that Maria has for her mother burns brightly, despite the way she was raised and separated. In some cases, climbing to the top of a trash heap is the best way to see fireworks.
Horde is currently on the road in Ireland and the UK. For more information on what else to see in theaters, be sure to check out the rest of our Big Screen Spotlight series.
