NAN- ELS-7
Movie
By Ebere Agozie
New York, Oct.5, 2015 (Reuters/NAN) Actress Emily Blunt who played Rachel Watson, in “The Girl on the Train’’ says the movie highlights women’s struggles.
The movie is a story of loneliness, alcoholism, voyeurism and female empowerment.
It is about an alcoholic who has lost her job and her marriage and who spies from the train on her cheating ex-husband and his new wife Anna.
Rachel turned an amateur detective when another woman with disturbing secrets, goes missing and turns up dead.
According to her, I feel like this film represents women’s right to be bad, flawed, wrong, and messed up and I think women around the world are going to applaud that.
“Yes, the women were pitted against each other in the beginning, but yet they ultimately united, and they were real.
“All three women are subject to jealousy, controlling behavior and gas lighting, the term for psychological abuse that makes a victim doubt his or her sanity.’’
Some previews have had women in the audience cheering at the end as the female characters wreak their revenge.
The movie opens during domestic violence awareness month in the United States and the National Network to End Domestic Violence has produced discussion questions that highlight themes of abuse in the book.
Director of the film Tate Taylor said he would be glad if the film empowered women.
“I didn’t intend on an intellectual level for it to be a revenge film, but it has struck a nerve.’’
Taylor, who also directed the female-centric movie “The Help’’, attributes his empathy with women to his upbringing.
“I was raised by a single mom and she was pretty much my primary caregiver, so I had a lot of female energy and I saw a lot of struggle.
“A lot of determination and a lot of success and I equate women with being survivors because of my mom,’’ he said.
Taylor and Blunt said the movie was deliberately darker than the book.
“We agreed that we were really going to reveal the underbelly of domestic life in all its darkness said Blunt.
“It’s incredibly brutal to watch at times and unsettling, and I am thrilled that even for lovers of the book, it still shocks.’’ (REUTERS/NAN)
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Edited by Ese E. Ekama