One of Netflix’s newest films called “Purple Hearts” seems to be gaining more and more attention – Both good and not-so-good attention. The views have swelled for its second week after release as over 100 million hours of the film have been streamed, and has become the number one movie on Netflix worldwide.
It’s so popular that it’s on track to becoming one of Netflix’s most-watched films. The movie, featuring Sofia Carson and Nicholas Galitzine, follows a liberal performer who consents to wed a Marine to get medical coverage.
Multiple waves have been made by the film causing backlash thanks to some apparent racist and misogynistic themes. One such scene occurred when the Marine makes a toast and in his speech says: “This one is to life, love and hunting down some goddamn Arabs, baby!” While Carson’s Cassie calls him out prior to stomping off, Galitzine’s Luke dismisses it and it’s before long overlooked, similar to his more conservative beliefs she was once miserable about.
And while the director of the film Elizabeth Allen Rosenbaum has tried to ignore the criticism that many are throwing at the film, she was no longer able to dismiss them. In a statement she told to Variety, she explained that the people in the film need room to grow so that character development can occur and that at the start of the movie they purposely made two characters flawed, making them initially bred to hate each other from the start.
“They are flawed at the beginning and that was intentional. In order for the red heart and the blue heart to the kind of turn purple, you have to have them be kind of extreme. Some of the people that they’re surrounded with are even more flawed than they are.” She continued, “They both have been neglected by the system; he’s hurt in a war that doesn’t seem to be ending and she’s slipping through the cracks of the healthcare system,” she continued. “So they’re both neglected by the system, and then they live under one roof, and in these extreme circumstances, they learn to become more moderate and to listen to each other and to love.”
She noted that our nation is presently flawed and they wanted to reflect that in the film, and I’d agree. People getting angry over a movie like this says a lot, I remember back in the good old days when if you didn’t like a movie, you just didn’t watch it.
She continued explaining that people are missing the point and that they never meant to offend anyone. The movie is a story of love, but it goes deeper than that. It’s about two people who were born worlds apart and from the get-go were to hate each other, but later they end up falling in love and eventually figure out how to lead with sympathy and kindness and love one another, transforming into a delightful shade of purple.
According to Carson, they worked hard on making sure both sides were shown as close to their real nature as possible. However, for as much backlash as the film is receiving, there is just about the same amount if not more positive reactions for depicting what it’s like to live with Type 1 Diabetes, something Rosenbaum and Carson chipped away at with Laura Pavlakovic, the organizer behind the nonprofit You’re Just My Type, along with Dr. Michael Metzger, who was a clinical specialist on set.
The wow factor didn’t stop there, this movie was produced with a tight budget, and they weren’t able to cover the cost of the insulin siphon so they got a Medtronic expert, who turned out to be the person in the scene administering the siphon for the first time.
“We both felt like it was a massive part of the story and a cool responsibility to be able to shed some light on it. But every time we talk ahead of time to anyone who has Type 1 Diabetes, they were just so grateful because usually it’s like, been a weakness for a character in movies, and oftentimes, they’ll die from it. If you look at ‘Steel Magnolias,’ and those are beautiful stories too, but it was great to have to watch someone strong and try to overcome that,” said Rosenbaum.
Carson mentioned that Rosenbaum “set the tone” of the film to ensure it was driven by realism.“The more that we learned about diabetes, the more that we wanted to really represent what it means to be a Type 1 Diabetic in 2022 in the United States, as accurately and as vulnerably as possible,” she said.
She concluded by saying that she did her research on what it’s like by communicating with doctors and working with Laura and she came to realize that people who have to surrender everything they have just to get the insulin they need right then and there to live another day is devastatingly unfair.
This story syndicated with permission from For the Love of News
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