How to make an American quilt: film analysis and report

¶ … American Quilt (film Report)

For more than two hundred years American women have gathered many times in groups for a quilting bee. It was an important means of socialization for pioneer and colonial women.

How to make an American quilt" is a movie based on the bestseller by Whitney Otto, which gathers the stories of several women in a quilting bee as they sew a quilt as a wedding present for the relative of one of the members who has come to visit, Finn Dodd {Winona Ryder}.

Finn is a young student woman who graduated and she is finishing her master's thesis and she is soon to be married to her fiance Sam. She goes to her grandmother's to finish her paper. Her grandmother is a member of a group called the quilting bee. The women from the quilting bee group are making for Finn a quilt, which will be her weeding present. At her grandmother's house, Finn finds advice and she listens to the other women's experiences in love. Eventually she has a different perspective of her situation.

The women in the quilting bee tell Finn their love stories. The group consists of Anna, Glady Jo Cleary, Hy Cleary, her daughter Marianna, Em Reed, Constance and Sophia. As the film goes on we find out that in these women's stories there are many cases of infidelity. Some have been cheated by there husbands and some of them had affairs. The film is torn between love and lust.

These characters are tied by the making of a quilt, it is an element which kept them together and is still keeping them close no matter what happens or happened. A scene that brings them together is the one when Finn's thesis is blown away by a strong wind and all the women jump to gather the papers, it is again a symbol of their unity. "Everything apart yet puts everything together."

Between the two sisters Glady and Hy there is bitterness because when Hy's husband, who was Finn's grandfather, was in the hospital dying, Hy ended up having an affair with Glady's husband. Glady was very got mad when she found out and ended up throwing things at her husband. It seems that Glady never forgave Hy and that is why she still treats her sister coldly. She never got through her husband's adventure, and deep down she didn't find the way to forgive them, she stills feels very hurt. She is vulnerable, and her grief is sunk in a bottle of cognac and a cigar of marijuana.

Em is deeply in love with her husband; she is near him and ready to forgive his mistakes. She told Finn about his husband Dean who is an artist, and he cheated on her with his student throughout their marriage. When he said the right words she forgave him. One of the flashbacks presents an womanizing artist, painting with wild brush strokes, he is attractive and he seems on top of his world, in the next scene the viewer sees the man in the present and he is old, frail, physically and psychically dependent on his wife that he used to paint and on whom he had cheated so many times. One of his lovers was Constance who just took comfort from him, but in reality she suffered deeply from the death of her beloved husband. It was physical sex not real love, she remained devoted to her husband and suffered a great deal after his death, she is left only with her precious memories.

Finn falls for temptation eventually; she has an affair with Leon, a handsome guy who she meets at the pool. She considers having the affair because she thinks her fiance is having an affair. When she called him a woman answered the phone and this was what made her suspicious of Sam. It is not real love with Leon, it is more physical sex. Finn is a very confused character there is a question in the beginning that Ryder's voice tells the audience: "How do you merge into this thing called a couple, and still keep a little room for yourself? How do we even know we're only supposed to be with one person for the rest of our lives?" Finn is confused whether to choose a man who she feels attracted to or a man who is more like a friend to her. She might never experience real love so these questions are right to be put. The viewer never finds out whether or not Sam cheated or not on Finn. Although she is not sure of the adultery, Finn decides to go on and try an adventure with Leon. This proves that she is not too much in love with Sam that she wants to experience more until she finds real love. If she had been in love she wouldn't have taken so quickly the decision to know better Leon. The scene when Finn is tempted and seduced by Leon is really captivating. In the orange grove Finn gets laid and she is convinced to play an erotic game in which she imitates a Victorian maiden being touched for the very first time. In spite of this affair at the end of the movie her decision is that she will settle down and have her own family.

The other women tell their love stories too. Anna had an affair as a young woman with her boss's son, it was an interracial relationship. She got pregnant and she was sent away but she found help at Glady's and Hy's home. The flashback reveals the fact that Anna was the one who thought Glady and Hy to sew a quilt. Marianna, Ann's daughter met her love but he turned out to be married, all she had left from him was a poem that she kept. Sophia and Preston got along pretty quick and they got married and had kids. In the end Preston deserted her. Her marriage was a forced one because Sophia's mother wonted her married considering that she was not pretty to handle life on her own.

The quilt is the symbol of the social and political bonding between all these women. The theme presented in the movie is briefly reduced to the statement that everybody cheats once in a while and that forgiveness is required in the end in order for the circle broken by infidelity to be complete.

Some of these women find a way to forgive, and this is because they truly love, Em is the perfect example, and some of them are hurt and try to find a way to come to peace with the situation. Life is not perfect, but it can be made pleasant, even beautiful, sometimes people succeed in making it so difficult and horrible when there is a simple way to make it close to perfect. As Finn grows older she will find out that true love between two people is more than physical attraction and that everybody deserves the benefit of a doubt and even a second chance.

People are attached to each other in many ways. Everybody has his faults and can get tempted by anybody. People are frail and can easily fall into temptation. People should understand this and be more understanding to each other. Temptation comes in the form of a man, in Finn's case, or in the form of drugs and alcohol in Glady's situation. From experiences people change to a better or a worse person.

The movie gathers women's love stories and their experience with men. The director is somehow shallow when considering that men are all cheaters and they turn out to be something else than what women thought at the beginning of a relationship. The film has a feminine ideology that translates into women who should stick together because they can never depend on men. God created man and woman, it can never be one without another, woman comes to complete man and vice versa. They are so different and when they come together they become complete. True love means feelings that spring from the bottom of the soul, and also means forgiveness for the other, and understanding each other's temptations and frailties, it has nothing to do with physical attraction.