“Every time I
feel like a beggar, a thief coming to take their money. They look at me, ready
to hit me. I feel like I'm hitting them too.”
Two Days, One Night
is not an entirely enjoyable movie in the traditional sense. The reason for it
not being really enjoyable is because it is so real. There is no music playing
over scenes, the only music that does play is from a car radio. The characters
are not glamorous they are real people you see in your everyday life and
personally know. But all of those aspects are actually what made me enjoy it
though.
The story is about a Belgian woman named Sandra (Marion
Cotillard) who receives a call one afternoon that her job is dependent on a
vote from her coworkers the following Monday. They can either vote for a
thousand Euro bonus or they can vote to keep Sandra in. The owner of the
factory and another boss are mean and want to let Sandra go because she had
been on medical leave and in her absence they found that they only need
sixteen people working in her section
and decide that she is the seventeenth person.
Sandra is given a list of her coworkers that have been
promised the bonus if they vote against her. That entire weekend she goes
around town looking for her coworkers and speaking to them about their vote.
Sandra needs to keep her job because her husband’s job does not bring in as
much money as hers and they cannot live solely on his pay.
Marion Cotillard was nominated for an Academy Award for
her role in this movie. I am still baffled that she did not win. The reason she
should have won is because she was playing a woman that we all know. Sandra
could be our neighbor, sister, mother, aunt, friend, etc. I would think it has
to be harder for an actress or actor to play a person who real and not
fictional and glamorous. Sandra is a woman who is depressed and the last thing
she needs in her life is to lose her job. We see her emotions go from embarrassment
to driven to passionate to unsure to desperate. There was no dramatization or
overacting of these emotions because that is not what normal people normally
do. Marion Cotillard is such an amazing actress. Whatever movie she is in she
just makes her characters ten times better. I remember during the Academy
Awards season asking my brother Anthony, who is also a movie buff and is
actually studying film related things in college, who he thinks should win Best
Actress and without hesitation he said Marion Cotillard. He loved this movie
and her performance so much. As a sign that Anthony loved this movie and Marion
Cotillard he said he hopes that the Criterion Collection releases it.
Two Days, One Night
is literally a woman begging people for them to vote for her to keep her job
instead of their bonus. I will admit I did get a little bored but for the most
part I liked it because it was real. It was unsettling watching this poor woman
who is battling depression go and beg for her job because it was so real. When
we watch movies we want glamour we want a story that will take us out of our
real world and into another. Two Days,
One Night keeps us in our real world we want to escape. I liked this movie
and I feel I liked it because, one, I adore Marion Cotillard to absolutely no
end, and, two, because I am a movie buff and if a movie is different from all
the garbage that is put out today I will watch it and most likely really enjoy
it. I will suggest Two Days, One Night
to those sharing the same admiration for actress and types of movie as me.
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