zaaaAP Lit SuperBlog

Mersault and Matthew

When I was watching Trust I couldn't help but think of the similarities and differences between Matthew and Mersault.  From the movie I would say that in all they're different from each other but they have one striking similarity which is how they reject traditional aspects of society.   Matthew thinks it's wrong to watch tv and doesn't believe in love.  Mersault believed in whatever fit him best in the moment and thought marriage and other things in society were petty.

Mersault and Matthew are different in what sets them off.  I am pretty sure that Mersault would never carry around a grenade to kill himself, when need be.  I think that the impulse that Matthew had to kill himself was different than the impulse that Mersault had when he killed the Arab.  Mersault was under a lot of physical torment, he was hot...  Matthew was under emotional and physical torment.  I believe the beating he recieved from his father and quitting his job were factors but what really pushed him was Maria telling him that she didn't want to marry him and that she had an abortion.  I don't think Mersault could actually get burdned by overwhelming emotions because Mersault can adapt.  Matthew couldn't, his way out was to kill himself.

Another difference between Matthew and Mersualt is that while Mersault just lived and didn't really care about the world, Matthew in a way did.  Matthew had his own beliefs and morals. He felt it was wrong for the computer company to build and sell faulty computers, and he made it known by confronting someone about it.  Mersault would never have done that, he probably wouldn't have cared. 

Similarities Between Maria and Matthew

When I was watching Trust, I was starting to wonder about certain things.  Maria is only seventeen and has to deal with the death of her father, being pregnant, and relationship problems.  Also, there are many scenes in the movie that I think show how much alike Maria and Matthew are.  One part was when Maria wants Matthew to go live with her for awhile.  She tells Matthew that he needs to get away from his father, but then when Matthew gets to Maria's house, he tells her that she needs to get away from her mother because she is a psychopath.  Maria also tells Matthew that she has contemplated suicide before, and so has Matthew (especially since he has a hand grenade with him all the time).  I think that Maria and Matthew have a lot in common and during the rest of the movie, more similarities will be shown.  What do you think?  Do you think they are similar and have similar lifestyles?   

Existentialism in Trust

Throughout this film I have been thinking to myself where is the connection between this and The Stranger? As the movie progresses however I believe that I am beginning to see more and more connections. Maria began the movie by asking her father for five dollars. She wore flashy clothes, used lots of makeup, and did her hair in a special style hoping to approve her appearance.
As the movie progresses Maria becomes an outcast to society. She is not welcome in her own home, she is kicked out of school, and she is pregnant at the age of seventeen. As a result she begins to give up many of these material items that society associates with beauty. She begins to wear her hair straight down, puts on her glasses, and wears a plain blouse that does not attract much attention. Furthermore, she gives up the bed she once slept on and now sleeps on the ground. She is beginning to show more and more signs of an existentialist life.
However, while talking to Matthew she argues the reality of love and forces her point that there is such thing as love and not just "respect and admiration." Is Maria really becoming an existentialist?

Trust, Strangely Familiar

Of course one of the biggest questions about Trust is why we are even watching it.  I'm sure they are similar in their overall messages and in existentialist thought, but to start i thought i would point out some plot/character similarities.

The first i found was the relationships between Matthew:His father and Salamano:His dog.  Both relationships are clearly abusive. I think the most interesting part to both relationships is how Matthew's father and Salamono react with their "partners" are gone.  Salamano is strangely upset by the disappearance of his dog, and Matthews father even attempts to visit him at the repair shop after he has moved out.

Both works open with the death of a parent. Not only is the plot similar but the style as well.  The two deaths were presented rather bluntly. In The Stranger it was the first line and seemed to be anti dramatic.  Similarly in Trust a simple slap turns into murder, with almost no hype.

The main characters have very similar names Maria:Marie  Meursault:Matthew

The last similarity i want to point out is how all four of the main characters throw around the word marriage.  In today's society a proposal is usually a big deal and in fact a life changing event, where in both works marriage proposals are brought up during normal conversation.

Do these similarities have any meaning? Did you notice any other similarities? Do the two share any themes?  Also, hope you all got my pun in the title "strangely" "stranger". I thought it was pretty good.

Can You Really Trust Another?

I am really enjoying the movie "Trust." For one thing, I think it's interesting and darkly funny. But also, it posses a good question, "Can we really trust someone else?" We are shown that parents and their children. Maria breaks her parents trust because she drops out of school and gets pregnant. Which is a surprise to them. Children cannot trust parents because they can abuse them, like with Maria's mom trying to set up her older daughter with Matthew. Even in a relationship there is the question of trust. Maria trusted her boyfriend to marry her, so she wouldn't have to worry being "stupid." But he turns his back on her. There is also random characters you meet that cannot be trusted like the lady who stole the baby or the alcohol shop owner. Even Maria's best friend turns her back on her when she asks if she can live with her. The viewer's last hope is between Maria and Matthew. Will they be able to prove it is possible to trust? Or will they deceive each other too? We also see that Maria is educating herself and becoming independent. Is that because the only person that you can truly trust is yourself? Or can you even trust yourself?

Could trust be related to the situation? Both Maria and Matthew come from abusive homes, which doesn't allow for a good establishment of trust.

What do you think are the requirements to trust someone else? Do you think it is even possible?

Who Needs Help?

There was one line that really stuck out to me throughout the whole movie which came from Matthew when he runs into Maria in the abandoned house.

Maria - What do you want?
Matthew - I don't want anything.
Maria - Why not?
Matthew - Because I don't think any of it will help.

    What is it exactly that Matthew means with this line? It's pretty safe to say that Matthew's outlook on the society around him isn't that great since he's always quitting jobs saying that "some things are simply not meant to be fixed." So is it because that his disgusted with society already, and that he says nothing can help because he knows nothing from the society can help him.

    This also points out another interesting question. If it says that none of it will help, then that must mean that he already is in trouble. Is he in some way imprisoned in the society in a way that he doesn't want to be? Or maybe he simply needs help because he carries a grenade around with him at all times.

Matthew and Maria

In the film Trust, it seems as though Matthew is initially the existentialist. He lives his life the way he wants to, and he doesn't let anyone or anything get in his way. Matthew will not work for something he doesn't believe in, even if he really needs the money. He thinks that T.V. gives people cancer therefore he will not work in a shop that fixes them. When he meets Maria it seems as though his lifestyle begins to change. As their relationship unfolds Matthew offers to marry Maria and support her and her child. While this is happening Maria begins to change her ways of life in what she wears including her glasses, she reads books and carries around thesauruses. She starts to become the existentialist, while Matthew begins to sacrifice his existentialism. He gets a job at the T.V. repair shop and states that he will marry and support Maria. In the end Maria decides she doesn't want that, it leaves Matthew confused and seemingly heartbroken.'

By the end were they both back to being existentialists, or was it just Maria?

What's Up with Marriage?

In Trust its obvious that the concept of marriage changed Matthew's character to an out-of-the-box thinker to a follow-the-rules normal member of society.  This is made apparent when Matthew gets a job and starts watching television.  All of these observations however, lead to one question: 

Does marriage obstruct living an authentic life?

Do You Trust Me?

One of the things that struck me about Trust was all the exaggerations. In fact, the majority of the movie was an exaggeration. From the beginning, when Maria literally kills her father, the viewer is thrown into a world blown out of proportion. From Maria's psychopath mother, all the men dressed in trench coats, smoking pipes and arriving on the 5:15 train, Matthew carrying around a grenade, his dictatorial father, the woman who snatched the baby(and the mother who leaves him alone outside), pretty much everything in this movie is exaggerated, a caricature of real life. Maria's character also makes a complete 180, from tight skirted "harlot" to the thesaurus bearing woman she starts to become in the end.

So, I'm wondering, what good does all this craziness accomplish? What purpose does it serve? Perhaps it is there to prove a point, to show how ridiculous it all really is. Almost like the robot woman in The Stranger seems to embody all the values of the society and take them to an extreme.

Any other thoughts as to why the filmmaker chose to do this?

The Stranger vs. Trust

Although Trust is not entirely like The Stranger, I do believe that Trust has some commonalities.  Despite the fact that Trust is not nearly as existentialist as The Stranger I do think that it has its moments.  For example, when Matthew and Maria are in the abortion clinic and they are talking back and forth, in society today that would be a full out argument, but because Matthew and Maria appear to be so indifferent it does not bother them at all; once one thing is said, either they comply or completely drop it. 

I also believe that Matthew is much like Meursault in the way that, Matthew refuses to mold his morals for other people in the beginning of the movie, much like Meursault.  When Meursault was asked to lie in court he refused, this is a lot alike to Matthew when he will not take a job just because they will pay him; he hates lowering his standards just because it is what people are supposed to do when they need money.  On the other hand, later in the movie Matthew begins to allow his morals to take the backseat to his need for money and benefits.  When he is going to try and take care of Maria and get a job; he is willing to look past his morals.  I do not believe that Meursault would do this; I think that he would keep looking for a job that suited him, even if his family needed money. 

In all I thought this movie was really bizarre and at first did not know how it related to The Stranger, but as the movie went on, I think the characters became I lot less complex and easier to read.  Although I admit that much of this movie confused me, I think that Matthew, Maria, and Maria's mother eventually made complete sense.  They were all just trying to do what society would expect of them.  For example, Matthew wanted to marry Maria to get her away from her mother and support her.  Maria was just attempting to live her life.  And Maria's mother just wanted to protect her, although she did it in some very odd ways....

Maria vs. Marie

There is a great contrast between Camus' portrayal of women, from the existentialist viewpoint, and thta of the film Trust.

Camus seems to consider women incapable of existentilaist feelings or of achieving a truly authentic life, they are just too emotional.  Both Marie and the Arab woman seem to need a man.  The Arab woman goes back to Raymond and Marie needs Meursault, when he is in jail he assumes that she leaves him for another man after his conviction.

However, in the film Trust, Maria is the existentialist, and most women in it seem to regard men as a burden, or simply as a means to children or pleasure, i.e. Maria's twisted, psychopathic mother.

Maria rejects her whole life and starts over again, the perfect action for an existentialist.  However, ironically, unlike Marie and Meursault, both Matthew and maria need eachother, or at least they lead eachother to leading an authentic life.

Matthew - Future Existentialist?

I am really enjoying this movie so far. It is one of the most interesting movies that I have seen, and I find that I can see a lot into what the characters are thinking and feeling by their interactions with each other and their way of speaking. When the movie first began, I thought that Matthew was going to be quite similar to Meursault. The way he "quit" his job (though I assume putting your boss' head in a vice would get you fired) and how he said it to his father somewhat nonchalantly, lead me to believe that he was living his own life and doing what he wanted. This was quite similar to the existentialist Meursault, who did whatever he wanted without a second thought.  However, as the movie went on, it was clear to me that Matthew is not an existentialist. He still lives with his father and follows his rules. He goes out to get odd jobs when his father tells him to, and cleans the bathroom three times even though he knows that he had cleaned it before. He is obviously not happy about his situation, and gets angry after he gets the TV repair shop, telling the owner that he does not want to repair TVs. Matthew does not want to do what he is being forced to do by his father, yet he does it anyway, and in this way he is not an existentialist.

Then Matthew meets Maria, who to me seems most existential. She lives her own life does not care what anyone else wants her to do. Matthew wants to marry her, and it seems as though he will do it, even if his father will not want him to. Do you think the friendship and possible union of Matthew and Maria will make Matthew more of an existentialist?

Is She Really Grieving???

I would like to start off by saying that I have really enjoyed this movie in class.  Not only do i think it's different, I like how straight forward the characters are in their emotions and whats happening in their life.  For example, the opening scene the main character flat out tells her parents that shes pregnant and that she got kicked out of school.  Their was nothing timid in her explanation of things.  The one question i had during the movie occurred when the mother was sitting with the guy( I forget his name) at the kitchen table and she is smoking a cigarette and making a very sketchy conversation.  It is clear that she is going through some type of grieving process for her husband's death however the way she is speaking makes me think she is experiencing a sense of freedom in what has happened.  The beginning scene she did not speak at all and she seemed to let her husband control the situations of the household.  Now with him gone we see her emotion and hear her speaking which makes me think that she was controlled by her deceased husband.  What do you guys think?

Maria Meursault

Throughout the movie "Trust", I have been looking into possible cases of existentialism.  The major one I have seen has been Maria.  Throughout the movie, she is living her own life.  By unintensionally killing her father, getting pregnant, and dropping out of school, she is choosing her own way to live.  This stops after she meets Matthew.  Also some could see Matthew as an existentialist, I believe he is not.  He always listens to his father, tries to get a job, etc.  But after Maria and Matthew meet, he asks her to marry him.  She tells him that she will only if he realizes that trust, respect, and admiration are signs of love.  He agrees, and this marks the possible end to Maria's existentialist ways.  She has fallen into the system which Matthew so commonly obeys.  I called her a Meursault because like Meursault, she was existentialist, but in the end, an event with one person leads him to his descent into the system.  I think this will happen to Maria.

Trust is love

I began watching "Trust" through an existentially critical eye, however I soon realized it was harder for me to make connections to "The Stranger" than I thought. As outrageous as this movie is, its also as simple as "everyone wants to love and be loved". From the woman whose husband doesn't want children, to the man who is being abused by his father, a common theme is love. This movie reminded me of the movie "Harold and Maude," centered around an unlikely love between an 80 year old woman and a highly depressed teenage boy. Harold fakes his own suicide many times during the movie in attempts to get his mother's attention or evoke love and care from her. He spends his free time going to a psychoanalytic shrink and funerals. At these funerals he keeps running into this vivacious old woman named Maude. Through her quirky tendencies and love of life, Harold gains the confidence in himself to love her and love himself. This seemingly ridiculous love-story reminded me of the change the girl in "Trust" goes through. She breaks free from her superficial hold on life and begins having the confidence in herself to demand more. I am sure there are more depressing takes on the movie so far, however light-hearted love isn't always bad.

Olivia W.