Grief and Hope, American Style

Last updated on: January 25, 2021 at 1:01 am by Agnes Howard

Grief and Hope, American Style 2021-01-24T20:11:27-04:00 Agnes Howard

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

In our season of tumult, grief, and new hope, the film Pieces of a Woman, released on Netflix this month, strikes notes both disturbing and timely. One reviewer asks, on the film’s central question, “can anything be gained by making someone pay for an irretrievable loss?” Based partly on the experience of filmmakers Kornél Mundruczó and Kata Wéber, Pieces’ most noteworthy feature is the single-shot 24-minute scene of the character Martha’s (Vanessa Kirby) home birth, which ends with the death of her infant daughter. The way Martha and her husband Sean (Shia LeBeouf) grieve is so disparate as to drive the couple apart. Martha’s mother Elizabeth (Ellen Burstyn) thinks healing will come only with justice done—that is, punishing the midwife who attended Martha’s delivery. Spoiler alerts hardly pertain, as the film’s trailer reveals all this. Reviews roundly assess the movie as a chronicle of grief and loss, what happens after a baby’s death rather than the thing itself.

It’s a strange way to frame an emotionally charged story: midwife-attended home birth gone wrong. Were it common for men and women in America to welcome a baby at home, screen presentation of it would require no more explanation than would a kindergarten scene opened by the arrival of a school bus. But in the US midwife-attended births are rare, growing in prevalence but still under 10%. Home births even rarer, around 1% annually, though Covid boosted interest in birthing at home. Nowhere around the long and dramatic birth scene does the film explain why this couple chose to have the baby at home, how they prepared for it, what each member of the couple had at stake, or how they weathered outside pressure about their decision. The birth itself epiphenomenal, something that happens in the film on the way to grief.

Scanting the couple’s explanation of why they chose the home birth risks impugning it, endorsing the caricature of home birth that arises near the film’s end in a heavy-handed courtroom scene. There a lawyer voices common complaints against home birth as the selfish choice of a woman interested in a particular kind of experience gotten at the cost of her child’s safety, which would be better secured in a hospital. The film makes this Martha’s only scripted moment to defend the decision to deliver at home, and she accords agency to the baby, saying she wanted her daughter to come when she was ready. Unusually for an American woman choosing home birth, she does not offer her own justification for it or for choosing a midwife.

Pieces misses opportunity to explore powerful reasons for these choices. For her book, Blessed Events: Religion and Homebirth in America, Pamela Klassen interviews diverse women interested in home birth for reasons best described as spiritual or religious. Evangelical women appear in Klassen’s account but also Old Order Amish, women belonging Reform Judaism, or mothers-to-be revering goddesses. These women construct the meaning of birth in spiritual terms, prefer the way home accommodates spiritual expression better than hospital protocols would. Many reasons besides spirituality shape choice of a birth location, but religion’s utter absence is from the birth scene and aftermath is conspicuous.

Pieces also misses opportunity to address the importance of midwifery, statistically limited but resurgent in the United States. By giving the midwife Eva no voice after the initial birth scene, the film leaves open implications that she may have been negligent or incompetent, even though neither Martha nor Sean thinks the baby’s death was Eva’s fault. As the work of Barbara Katz Rothman and others demonstrate, American midwives practice with distinctive skill and expertise, handling births at least as safely as obstetricians do.

Grief not only pushes Martha and Sean apart, it pushes them away from others. The rarity of her misfortune makes Martha strange to family and friends. It is a privilege and progress to perceive the death of a child as unthinkable. Here Pieces intersects the concerns of the new book by Perri Klass, A Good Time to Be Born: How Science and Public Health Gave Children a Future. The title offers simultaneous reality checks and irony. “Good time” may not seem the best description of parenting now. But even now we can make edifying contrast to a century ago when infant mortality and childhood death from infectious disease was common, rich and poor alike aware that childhood was perilous. Klass chronicles how food safety, antibiotics, and vaccines defeated many perils of youth. With increased safety, though, came shift in parental assumptions. Parents went from recognizing that danger lurked on all sides to deeming any childhood harm unthinkable. We assume babies survive birth, assume our children will not succumb to tuberculosis, diphtheria, or scarlet fever. But children still are prone to dangers parents can neither explain nor prevent. And, as Pieces illustrates, that grief can be fiercely isolating.

Pieces also misses opportunity to address birth and death as necessarily spiritual and communal as well as physical and private. Religion appears only briefly on screen in Elizabeth’s recollection of Holocaust survival and a relative’s sermon reference to time healing wounds. The film’s characters insist on the right to determine the shape of their own private mourning, mostly Martha’s. To her mother’s plea that “We need some justice here,” Martha retorts, “No*, you* need.” When Martha refuses a burial, scorns a headstone, and strips the nursery, Sean asks why she is “trying to disappear my kid,” and she replies, “Because we don’t have a kid.” The viewer may be bidden to respect her mourning, its raw pain and unconformity to manners trying to smooth it over. Hope does come. Martha finds her own way to healing through apples, which remind her of the scent of her daughter, and the film ends gauzily with a blonde child climbing an Edenic apple tree to eat its fruit.

But we view the film in a particular time and place, amidst an ongoing pandemic. If this is a film about loss rather than birth, a “history of grief,” we may want to interpret it for our moment, apart from the circumstances of perinatal loss. Unity is nowhere to be found in Pieces of a Woman. Bringing the film to address the 2020 rallying cry of Covid opposition—We’re All in This Together!— should jar the viewer in two ways. On one hand, it reminds us that our experiences of loss, including Covid losses, are quite disparate and we feel them differently, despite promises of easy solidarity. On the other hand, as we seek hope, the breadth of our common losses in 2020-2021 remind us that loss is rarely only private, that others share it and we need others to bear it.

Previous Post

January 22, 2021

America’s Invisible Churches

Next Post

January 25, 2021 The Forgotten American Bible

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category abolitionism Abortion Abraham Joshua Heschel Abraham Kuyper Abraham Lincoln Academia Activism Adam Renberg Advent Adventist africa African American Religion Agnes Howard Albert Camus American History American Religious History American Revolution American West Anabaptists Ancient History Andrea Turpin Andrei Tarkovsky Anglicanism Annales Ansley Lillian Quiros anti-Catholicism Antisemitism Anxious Bench apologetics Apparitions Arash Azizi Archaeology archives art Artificial Intelligence Asia Asian Americans Augustine Authors Bad Bunny Baptism Baptists Barack Obama Battle of Hastings Benjamin Franklin Bernard-Henri Levy Beth Allison Barr Beth Moore Bethany Mannon Bible Bill Cunningham Billy Graham Black Music Bob Dylan Body Boenhoffer Books Breastfeeding Bruce Springsteen C.S. Lewis Calvinism Cancel Culture Capitalism Carmelites Catholicism Cedric Robinson Cesar Chavez Charismaticism charity Charles Dickens Charles Lindbergh Che Guevara Chicago Children Chinese Christianity Chris Gehrz Christ Christian death Christian Higher Education Christian life Christian Nation Christian Nationalism Christianity Today Christmas Church life Church Practice cinema Civil Religion Civil Rights Movement Civil War civility Classics Climate Change Cold War Colonial Mexico colonialism Comer Communism community complementarianism Conference on Faith and History Congregationalism Conspiracies Conspiracy Conversion Narratives Coronavirus Costa Rica Council of Nicaea Covid-19 Creation Critical Race Theory Crusades Culture culture wars Daniel K. Williams David Barton David Swartz Death Ways death with dignity DEI democracy Democratic Party Devotion Digital Age Diplomacy discipleship diversity Donald Trump Drama Dua Lipa Early Church early modern Early modern Catholicism Easter Eastern Christianity economic exploitation Education elections Elie Wiesel Elizabeth II Elizabeth Taylor emotions Empire Engineering England enslavement Entertainment Episcopal Church Erica Ramirez eschatology Eurocentrism Evangelicalism Evangelicals Exegesis Family Feminism Film Flannery O'Connor folk music Food Foreign Policy founding fathers Franciscans Franciscus Junius fundamentalism Funerals G.K. Chesterton Gender Genocide genre geography George W. Bush George Washington George Whitefield Global Christianity Global church Grief Guadalupe guest post Guest Post gun control gun violence Gustavo Gutierrez Hamid Dabashi Harold John Ockenga Harvest Hate Hawaiian Christianity Healing health care Heather Cox Richardson Hell Heresy Hermeneutics Higher Education Hinduism Hippocratic oath Historical Fiction Historical Methodology Historical Profession Historical Profession Historical Theology Historical Thinking historiography Holidays Holocaust horror movies Human rights Humanitarian Work humanities Hummingbirds Hungary hymns Imago Dei Immigration Injustice Interviews Iran Islam Islamophobia Israel Ivan's Childhood Jacob Randolph James Bratt Janine Giordano Drake Japanese history Japanese Literature Jean Paul Sartre Jesse Miranda Jesus Jesus Christ Jimmy Carter Joan Baez Joan Didion Joanne Freeman João B. Chaves Joao Chaves Joey Cochran John Calvin John Fea John Tillotson John Turner Johnny Cash Jonathan Edwards Jonathan Tran Joseph Smith Josh Howerton Journalism Jr. Judaism Jürgen Moltmann Just War Justice Justin Brierley Karl Barth Katelyn Beaty koi ponds Kris Kristofferson Kristin Kobes Du Mez Latin American Religious History Latino Americans Lectio Divina Leisure Lent Leonard Cohen liberal arts liberalism Liberation Theology Linda Ronstadt Lisa Clark Diller Literature Lou Reed Lynchings Lynneth Miller Renberg Mainline Protestantism Malcolm Foley Marilyn Monroe Maritime history Mark Noll Marriage Martin Luther Martin Luther King Martyrdom Marxism Mary Masih Alinejad mass shootings material culture medieval Christianity Medieval Ethiopia Melissa Borja memory Mennonites Mental Health Mental Illness Methodism Mexican Americans Mexicans Mike Madrid Miles Mullin Min Jin Lee Miscarriage Missionaries Mister Rogers Mitt Romney modernity Monasticism Mormonism Motherhood Mothers of the Church Moving Music Musicals Nadya Williams Nahua Christianity Native Americans Natsume Sōseki New Contributor New England New Year New York Nico Non-Violent Protest Orthodoxy pacifism Paleo Evangelicals Palestinians Parenting Patti Smith Paul Kingsnorth Pedro Calderón de la Barca Pentecostalism Philip Jenkins Phillis Wheatley physician-assisted suicide pilgrimage Pilgrims pluralism Plutocracy Poetry Politics Pope Francis Pope Leo XIV post-modernism prayer preaching Presbyterians prosperity gospel Protest Public history Publishing Puritans purity culture Quakers race Race Massacres Racial Capitalism racial reconciliation racialization Racism Raha Bahloulipour Re-Enchantment reading Reformation Refugees religion and the university religion and war Religious Freedom Religious Nones Religious Pluralism Religious Symbols religious violence Republican Party Revival Rita Coolidge Ritual Roger Williams Roman Catholic church Royalty Russell Moore same-sex marriage Sarah Irving-Stonebraker Scandinavia Science Science and Technology Scopes trial Scriptural Interpretation secularism Selena Quintanilla seminary Seventh-Day Adventists sexual morality Sexuality Sikhs Silence slaveholders theology Slavery Slavoj Zizek social justice Social Media Southern Baptist Convention Southern Religion Spain Spiritual Autobiography Spiritual but not religious Spiritual Discipline Sports Stanley Hauerwas Suffering Summer Camps Sunday Night Odds and Ends Supernatural Supreme Court Syriac Christianity Tal Howard Taylor Swift Teaching Technology Television Thanksgiving The Beatles The Mission theater TheoBros Theology Thomas Dixon Thomas Jefferson Thomas Kidd Thomas Merton Tim Gloege Tim Walz Tom Holland Tourism tradition Tragedy Translation Transnationalism Travel Trump Ukraine Uncategorized Unitarians United Methodist Church US History Vanessa Chan Velvet Underground Verónica A. Gutiérrez Veronica Gutierrez Vikings Violence Virgin Mary Virtue Virtue ethics Visions Voting War WCTU Wendell Berry Westminster Assembly White Evangelicalism Wildfires Winnie the Pooh Witches women Women in Ministry Women's and Gender Studies Work Worship writing Yasunari Kawabata Zena Hitz

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

How long did it take to rebuild Jerusalem's walls under Nehemiah?

Select your answer to see how you score.

12 months 7 years 40 days 52 days