keeping mum

i just watched a show called "keeping mum" and it reali kept me thinking. maybe i've been doing too many lit analysis lately, and some parts reali hit me. the title itself is a pun, saying that, keeping Gloria's mum, and it's also referring to keeping mum, as in silent.

sure, there were funny jokes, puns, and all and dark humour behind everything.. but at the end of it all there are lessons to be learnt from this kind of things. reali. i duno why, but alot of things hit me.

here's the wikipeida synopsis first.

In the opening scene, a pregnant young lady called Rosie Jones (Emilia Fox) is traveling by train, and her very large case starts leaking blood. When questioned by the police, she calmly reveals that the two dismembered bodies inside are her unfaithful husband and his mistress. She is then sentenced by the judge (Roger Hammond) to a secure unit for the criminally insane.

Forty-three years later, in the village of Little Wallop, Walter Goodfellow, the vicar (Rowan Atkinson) is very busy writing the perfect sermon for a conference, and does not fulfill the sexual needs of his wife Gloria (Kristin Scott Thomas). Gloria has an affair with her golf instructor, Lance (Patrick Swayze), who also practices voyeurism: video-taping her daughter Holly undressing from outdoors. Holly (Tamsin Egerton) frequently has a new boyfriend, with one of whom she has sex with in a minibus at the front of the house. Son Petey (Toby Parkes) is bullied by schoolmates led by Billy Martin. Due to his work, his father notices little of all this.
Then, the new housekeeper Grace (Maggie Smith), arrives unexpectedly. Walter and Gloria first meet her when they have failed to fetch their son Petey from school; he was seen by Grace and she fetched him. When his parents see him and Grace, Gloria is very angry, thinking that Grace is trying to kidnap him. Grace then identifies herself by showing an envelope with her name on, and is immediately made welcome.

Grace learns of some problems in the house — Clarence, the neighbour's (Mr. Brown's) raucous dog who disturbs Gloria's sleep, the boys who bully Petey, and the golf instructor with whom Gloria is having an affair. (Walter does not know anything about any of this - the only problem he is aware of is the algae in the garden pond.)

Grave solves these problems in her own way. She first kills the dog, Clarence, and when his owner finds out that his dog has been killed she kills him also. She sabotages the brakes on the bikes of the bullies, injuring one of them and making Petey very happy. Next is the golf instructor, when she sees him videoing Holly undressing from outside the house.

Gloria and Holly discover the murders when Grace is about to kill a nosy neighbour (Mrs. Parker) because she thinks that she knows too much. While she is visiting to discuss the problem of the church flower arranging committee, Grace attempts to hit her over the head with a frying pan, but is prevented by Gloria. The neighbour then dies of a heart attack brought on by the shock.

Gloria tells Grace that when having a problem with someone, one cannot just kill them. She replies that her doctors kept telling her the same, but it was the one thing they could never agree on. Grace then reveals that she is Gloria's long-lost mother. She also reveals that she was Rosie Jones after Gloria and Holly watched a TV News chat show about murderers on parole. There they discovered that Grace was a killer. Grace eventually leaves the family when order seems to be restored among them.

At the end of the film, Walter is talking to Bob and Ted, the water works employees about the pond at the vicar's house. They say that there is too much algae and the pond will need to be pumped dry. Gloria knows that Grace disposed of her victims in the pond. An underwater shot at the very end shows us that Bob and Ted have joined them in the pond, giving the note that maybe Gloria is now following her mothers footstep in killing the troublemakers too.

ya, kinda long i know. but hey, it's worth it. haiz.. but it all started out with a dysfunctional family. i've always thought that families were important, and the stuff that they do. it's not onli the kids responsibility to please their parents, but vice versa as well. i know that this is a point of contentiont not many adults would agree on, but think about it, if u made our lives easier, u would be making urs easier too.

like what my aunt was saying.. how much is too much? if parents are nonchalent, they'll be deemed as bad. if they are too strict, they would be deemed as bad too, just by a diff group of ppl called their kids. sigh. in life, it's hard to make both sides happy.

furthermore, i'm convinced that marriage is always a problem. that's why i think i'll never ever get used to married life. sure, there'll be the honeymoon period, den everything is back to normal again. hum-drum life, no more excitment, husband starts taking u for granted, but this time, u can't do anything about it. i mean, is that it? is that what life is all about? sigh. it's reali depressing if tt is it. where's all the fun and excitment? i mean, we onli do get to live once..

den there's the problem of lying. using one lie to cover up for another, to cover up for another.. just like the dead bodies in the film. Gloria's mum tried to keep everything under wraps by killing everything that has got to do with seeig her perform smth suspicious that i the end, all that remains are dead bodies. no one will be able to cover things up forever. it's just the mess u leave behind tt counts. do smth, face up to it and admit it. den at least the problem will maintain it's "small-ness". if not, it'll be blown out of proportion, and who's to blame?

and then comes the act of murder in the story.. the things that we do, sometimes we think are non consequential, but they actually are. i mean, there are many instances in life that we actually do smth bad to cover up and protect someone we love, but in the end, we end up being the ones doing smth wrong, and God will punish us, not them. we think of this as sacrificial and extol it to the highest place, saying we put others interests before ours, but in reality (to put it crudely), it's just plain stupidity. nothing more, nothing less. sorry to all the self sacrificing ppl out there.

ok.. that's that. ross, i'm so so sorry. i forgot tt sunday was our 2 months.. =x grr. we shall watch beowulf together ya? sometime soon. i'm done with my exams le. i'm reali sorry sweetie. forgot that i promised to go out with u. how can i make it up to u? i didn't mean to turn u down de.. it's just tt i had things on. so so sorry. and thanks for regarding me as ur closest fren still, i appreciate it. reali. (: