The concept of capital punishment is a difficult issue, and Ezer neatly balances the two sides of the argument, personified by Mercy and Lucy respectively. Israeli director Tali Shalom-Ezer paints an effective portrait of a working-class American family which is nicely juxtaposed with the middle-class world to which Mercy belongs. The siblings live in the house where their mother was murdered and share a laptop between them. Lucy and her family live in a tiny town which everyone is scrambling to run away from, a trope seen in everything from Ladybird to Beautiful Creatures. Unfortunately, at times, My Days of Mercy suffers from this problem. But there comes a point when it detracts from the subject matter. There is a current trend in independent film-making to shoot much of the film with a shaky, unsteady hand to perhaps emphasise the messiness of reality. It is a bleak – bordering on hopeless – journey of life, death, and love.
It is at one of these events that she meets Mercy (Kate Mara), a young woman who is on the other side of the argument. Her elder sister Martha (Amy Seimetz) drags her and their younger brother, Ben (Charlie Shotwell), to executions at prisons all across the country to protest against capital punishment.
The central character is Lucy (Ellen Page), a young, lost woman whose father is on death row for killing her mother. My Days Of Mercy is a tender yet harrowing drama that, despite its serious subject matter, works through tired tropes of contemporary cinema, both in style and substance.
0 kommentar(er)
