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Saint Maud (2019)
If Travis Bickle were a nurse instead of a taxi driver, he would be called Maud
It was 1 am in the morning, I was trying to sleep, and suddenly my mind was filled with strange thoughts about a movie I had seen a couple of days before. Why can't I stop thinking about Saint Maud?
Firstly: Saint Maud is what Taxi Driver would be if its protagonist were a nurse.
I don't know if it's intentional or not, I imagine it is, but Taxi Driver serves as a template for this film. So much so that if we were to project both films on the wall at the same time, we would see how the events in each synchronize, and everything that happens to Travis would be seen simultaneously in Maud. I have no evidence for what I just said, but no doubts either.
I don't say this as a negative thing, far from my intention. I believe there are stories that humans have been telling since the beginning of time. Finding Nemo is Homer's Odyssey, and The Lion King is Hamlet. And I'm sure there's a dark passage in some sacred book that narrates the epics of a young boy who feels isolated from society, driven mad by loneliness, and ends up painting his face with the colors of war (or gets a mohawk or wears a tunic or paints himself as a clown) to end his enemies in the most violent way possible.
Let's not be mistaken, Taxi Driver is not about 70s New York (ahem ahem Joker), and its story could have happened just as well in North Yorkshire (another NY, coincidence??)
Saint Maud, like Taxi Driver, is about the alienation of men and women in modern societies. It's about loneliness, guilt, redemption, and madness. Maud and Travis Bickle are twins: neither has friends, they have a dark past we know little about, they are newcomers to an unknown city, both suffer romantic rejection and humiliation, both hate their jobs, believe they are destined for a greater purpose, both want to save someone from their own sins, both struggle to differentiate reality from fantasy, both apply their own war paint, one with a mohawk, the other with a tunic (and the other with clown makeup), before seeking redemption in a bloody massacre. Finally, Maud ends up as Travis would have liked to end (remember the gesture of his fingers imitating a gun against his temple).
Secondly: the names.
I love Saint Maud for how it handles its symbolism; it's not so obvious as to be explicit, but not so dark as to go unnoticed by someone like me.
There's a character named Joy, obviously representing joy. Then we have Amanda, a name that comes from the Latin "amandus," the gerund of the word "to love." Through Joy, we realize that Maud's real name is Katy, a diminutive or variant of the name "Katherine" or "Catherine," with Greek roots meaning "pure" or "immaculate." And of course, there's Maud, a name of Germanic origin meaning "powerful in battle" or "strong in combat."
And what happens to the immaculate Katy when the joy disappears, and she is betrayed by the beloved Amanda? Well, she becomes Saint Maud.