Mary and Martha is a 2013 British-American television film starring Hilary Swank and Brenda Blethyn, and directed by Phillip Noyce. Based on a screenplay by Richard Curtis, it was produced by Working Title Television, in association with the BBC and NBCUniversal. The film had its UK premiere on 1 March 2013 on BBC One and premiered in the US on HBO on 20 April 2013. The film is based on a true story. The film centers around two mothers, one British (Blethyn, based on Malaria No More UK Special Ambassador Jo Yirrell, whose sonlike the character played by Sam Claflinwas a volunteer teacher who always gave his malaria pills to his students at an African orphanage), and one American (Swank, as a fictional character, who garners most of the airtime), who share only one thing in common: the loss of their sons to malaria. After the deaths of their sons, the mothers decide to travel to Africa to help with malaria prevention. The film was nominated for the Humanitas Prize.
Plot Two very different women, Mary and Martha, who both lose their sons to malaria.
Mary is an overly protective American mother. After her young son and only child, George, is bullied by classmates, she decides to pull him out of school and take him on an extended trip to Africa because she feels she can give him a better education. Starting in South Africa, they next cross to Mozambique. While there, George is bitten by a mosquito and contracts malaria.despite rushing him back to a South African hospital, George dies. In the midst of grieving, Mary decides to return to Africa after George's funeral where she meets Martha, a British woman whose grown son, Ben, has also just died of the same disease while working at an orphanage in Mozambique. He was a carefree young man, who would give all his malaria pills to his students. Like George, he was an only child.
The two women turn their grief into action, hoping to thwart the disease, which the World Health Organization estimates killed 660,000 people in 2010, most of them African children. In the process, Mary and Martha come to realise that the losses experienced by two comfortable white Western households are atypical, and that the real impact of malaria is on parts of the world that few people in their circles know or care about. The pair testify before a Congressional subcommittee, raising increased funding for mosquito nets and malaria pills.
Cast
Reception Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 67 out of 100, based on 9 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews. Brian Lowry from Variety felt that:
Neil Genzlinger, writer for The New York Times, wrote that:
Critical with the film, The A.V. Clubs Simon Abrams wrote that:
References
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