Saint Maud (2019)

This was a weird one for sure, but by god did I love it. It was a strange, yet accurate take on religious extremism. Feeling like a character study, Saint Maud takes a look at Maud's experience with the divine, or what she interprets as such. Definitely walking a creepy line between devotion and criminal action, Maud sees the world around her as an opportunity to bring "god" from her mind into reality, and sees her new patient Amanda as someone needing saving from the world.

After Amanda fires her, Maud believes that it is her responsibility to kill the non-believer and sacrifice herself in a fire in order to be received into the deity's graces. Whatever that "deity" may be- *mental illness* is what it is, most likely. Maud is so interesting because she clearly has the typical "good intention" that so many Christians tout, but then her actions are incredibly vile and overstepping of several boundaries - asking Carol to leave Amanda alone, slapping Amanda at the party, and then stalking and murdering Amanda. All she cares about is hyper-fixating on Amanda's salvation and bringing Amanda to the light of what Maud believes is God.

Amanda trying to enjoy the very difficult end to her life brushes abrasively against Maud's attempt to crush Amanda's sinful behavior and convert her to God's love.

All of that being said, I believe this is a look at extreme self-hate. Because Maud is a sinful human but hates it, and hates her own human-ness, and Amanda is a bohemian-style humanity and is totally okay with that lifestyle, Maud sees her own suffering as "not a waste-" meaning she is earning her salvation through her suffering and self-hate. I think this is also connected to the finale of the film, in that Maud believes that Amanda is a servant of the Devil and needs to die. Maud, in killing Amanda, believes she has completed the final test that the deity personally blessed Maud with.

Maud's instability is well-crafted in the film; especially in the bar scene where her disconnection from natural human behavior is blatantly exposed around the other normal friends who are enjoying their human-ness. She tries to replicate smiling and laughing and then realizes that she feels fake, and stops. Once we learn more about her past - that she used to be "normal" and that she accidentally killed someone and then seemingly converted to an extreme form of home-brewed Christianity - it becomes abundantly clear that Maud has become delusional and self-flagellating, and has created her own concept of what "god" should be.

Punishing herself by putting pins in her shoes and kneeling on corn kernels is another symptom of extreme belief, and then the experience with the deeper voice in her shrine, which is actually Morfydd Clark's voice pitched down, are all indications that she sees violence and pain as currency with God, and that said God is actually within her own mind, just another concept of herself- regurgitating delusion back to herself. After she murders the "demon" that is Amanda - which again, I am convinced these are all hallucinations in her mind- she wakes up with Angel wings - as she has vanquished the enemy. She is now free to show the world she has earned god's love, and is "welcomed into the embrace" through her own motivation - and firey downfall.

The relationship between Amanda and Maud is complicated. Maud secretly wants to become and be with Amanda, and Amanda sees Maud as a pitifully lonely woman who is devoted to an abstract concept of goodness that is outdated and empty. I firmly believe Maud is both attracted to and repulsed by Amanda. She touches and bathes Amanda, watches Amanda have sex through a crack in the door, and helps Amanda look nice for parties, telling her how beautiful she is. But at the same time, Maud is disgusted by Amanda's soul. She believes Amanda's identity is being tainted by Carol, by alcohol, and by her own lack of respect for Maud's "god." This needs to be corrected. She sends Carol away, dumps the alcohol, and has intimate conversations about god and how he makes Maud feel with Amanda.

Maud, on top of all of this, experiences an incredibly bored, empty, and downtrodden life. She lives in a crack in the wall and caters to rich people. She is literally a nurse. Her job is to clean shit and vomit and make sure Amanda is comfortable. She trusts that "god" will use her for something, and she even prays, asking for "God" to reveal her purpose, which to me underlines how purposeless she feels. She lacks in human joy and has no friends or family to rely on. And the one friend she has, she alienates with a lofty and pious religious attitude.

All in all - bizarre,but well-made and GREAT film.