Trailer:
Criteria:
0/5 – No value whatsoever. Absolute waste of time.
1/5 – Barely worth any time.
2/5 – Pathetic but has a bit of something to hold the
attention a little.
3/5 – Somewhat kept the attention but could definitely have
used more.
4/5 – Good, but not awe-strikingly amazing. Could have maybe
used a bit more to the movie.
5/5 – Go see it! Wonderful movie all around – characters,
music, theme, storyline, etc.
"Albert Nobbs" is about a waiter named Albert Nobbs in Dublin. However, Albert Nobbs is more than what he appears - he is a she. She (female name never given in the movie) started out as a child out of wedlock and was given to a woman named Mrs. Nobbs to be cared for. When her mother died, the support money and education stopped. Albert had to help support Mrs. Nobbs and ended up buying a hand-me-down suit to work as a waiter for an event nearby. Albert got paid pretty good for the job and so decided to take it up for a living, because it is hard for a woman to get a decent wage job in the late 19th century. It is even hard for a man to get such a job in that time, as we see with another character named Joseph Mackins.
One day, a painter named Mr. Hubert Page comes to help the hotel where Albert works and, through lack of beds, Albert is exposed (to Hubert) to be a female. Albert was wearing a corset to keep her breast from showing and revealing her gender. Hubert then also reveals to Albert that he is a female also [hidden underneath the house painter's clothing].
Hubert tells Albert of the life she lives: a house, a wife, a simple life. Albert then starts to think about it and dreams about such a life, away from being a waiter at the hotel. Albert takes a fancy to one of the staff ladies at the hotel, named Helen Dawes, who has her eyes set on the 'handy man'/boiler-guy Joseph Mackins. Joe tells her to string Albert along, get as much money out of him as she can, and then they could run away to America. She finds Albert strange but never thinks of him as a suitor, though it is shown that Albert would be a better spouse than Joe would be.
SPOILERS:
It comes down to the fact that Joe got Helen pregnant, Joe didn't want to be a father, and Helen just could not let Joe go. Even when Albert proposed and said that he would take care of Helen and the child, Helen still wanted to be with Joe. Helen even said that she did not want to be with Joe anymore, so he left, but she was tempted to chase after him [because he was eye-candy]. And Albert dies without getting her dream of a normal life.
It is pretty sad that a woman would have to go to such extremes to survive the world. True, if it was a man-only kind of job, then I guess the extremes would be taken to get that job. However, the scene from Mulan (1998) comes to mind:
How often would people kill, humiliate, or degrade a woman who is cross-dressing just to survive? How often would people actually be kind like Shang and spare her life? [Mind you, I am not going to get into the topic about cross-dressing for non-survival situations.]
Also available on streaming through Netflix.
Rating:
4/5 – Good, but not awe-strikingly amazing. Could have maybe
used a bit more to the movie.
I find this movie to be a bit hard to swallow but I know that Albert was doing that just to survive. I find it sad that the girl tried to stay with the man who treated her horribly (because he was the child's father) over going with the 'man' who would have treated her properly. [Good guy chasing pretty girl who is chasing a bad boy, kind of thing.]
Not recommended for children.
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