“I Care a Lot” Witnesses the Ugly Truth

Release Date：Feb/19/2021

Genre：Comedy/Crime/Thriller

Director：J Blakeson

Cast：Rosamund Pike、Peter Dinklage、Dianne Wiest、Chris Messina、Alicia Witt

Viola's Rating：7.1

Due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the cinema and television industry, the 78^th Golden Globe Awards ceremony will take place nearly two months later than usual.

If you still remember the confusion the world had when Matt Damon won Best Actor for the Musical or Comedy category with “The Martian” back in 2016, you might feel puzzled again this year with Rosamund Pike nominated for Best Actress in a Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy since it discloses the ugly truth of the guardianship for the elderly. Although Pike’s latest feature film “I Care a Lot” was released on Amazon Studios and Netflix in select countries on Feb 19, 2021, it’s still showing on the big screen in several countries.

On Oct 2, 2017, The New Yorker published an article called “How the Elderly Lose Their Rights” by Rachel Aviv, exposing what private guardians in Clark County, Nevada did to their elderly wards. This article presented the detailed investigation of a piece of news, “Clark County’s private guardians may protect — or just steal and abuse”, on April 13, 2015, and “I Care a Lot” was inspired by this kind of incident.

“I Care A Lot” talks about how a crooked legal guardian, Marla Grayson (Rosamund Pike), who drains the savings of her elderly wards meets her match when a woman she tries to swindle turns out to be more than she first appears.

Something interesting about the characters is that there’s no “hero” in the flick since everyone in the story isn’t clean, so the audience needs to decide whom they feel more empathy for. There are four main roles: Marla, Fran (Marla’s girlfriend), Jennifer (the elderly ward) and a mysterious helper. Generally speaking, even though Fran’s just a supporting role and still part of Marla’s fraud, she’s the most favorable character in “I Care a Lot”, so pay attention to what the director did to the most innocent role in the motion picture.

Maybe it’s because of Pike, there are a bunch of similarities between “I Care a Lot” and her Oscar nominated “Gone Girl”. Be it the introduction of the leading role, or how calculated she is, both movies give Pike amazing opportunities to demonstrate her impeccable acting skills. Both Amy in “Gone Girl” and Marla in “I Care a Lot” are the kind of woman who are extremely attractive, but at the same time, the kind of woman whom you better not mess around with.

It’s interesting that the title “I Care a Lot” has a pun in it. Marla not only cares “a lot” elderly wards, but also “cares a lot” about her elderly wards’ money. “I care a lot” isn’t a sentence Marla says in the picture, but she keeps saying that she does what she does because she loves caring people, which is very sarcastic, and watching “I Care a Lot” makes you wonder how could this kind of ugly truth exist.

Picture Credit: Cai Chang International Inc.