One True Thing
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Movie Reviews of One True Thing
Movie Review: a moving film that you won't soon forget...
Summary: 5 Stars
One True Thing tells the touching and sensitive story of how a young woman (Ellen Gulden, played by Renée Zellweger) comes to understand her parents and their relationship with each other when a crisis strikes the family. The acting is superb; and the cast is full of top-notch actors: Ellen's mother Kate Gulden is played by Meryl Streep; and Kate's father George Gulden is played by William Hurt. Look also for a fine performance by Tom Everett Scott as Ellen's brother Brian Gulden.
When the action starts, a tough as nails and ambitious Ellen Gulden comes home for her father's surprise birthday party. Despite the fact that she looks up to her father as a great writer, the fact remains that Ellen doesn't truly value her parent's lifestyle. In fact, Ellen even acts ambivalently at best without apologies toward her mother Kate who is clearly cherishing traditional values of motherhood that clash sharply with Ellen's values of climbing the corporate ladder as a single woman in a world where it's "dog-eat-dog."
Although Ellen returns to her high pressure job in New York City after the party, it is not long before her father George calls her back home--and this time George wants Ellen to stay a while. Sadly, Ellen's mother Kate has been stricken with an incurable form of cancer and George is too selfish to take nay responsibility for his wife's care. Ellen resents being "stuck with" her sick mother; and she slowly comes to realize that her father George doesn't exactly deserve to be on that pedestal she put him on. Ellen must deal with realizations and the truth about her parents and their marriage that she never dreamed of--for example, her father's endless "flings" with younger woman at the college where he teaches understandably upset Ellen. Moreover, Ellen finally breaks down just enough to ask her ailing mother just how she (Kate, her mother) manages to do all the household work. Ellen comes to realize that household work is truly a challenge in certain ways. The scene in which Kate talks to her daughter Ellen about the understanding, work and compromise that make a marriage successful is particularly powerful.
What happens when Ellen's mother Kate is in her final days? Can Ellen and George take the stress or do they fail to rise to the occasion? Moreover, throughout the movie Ellen is seen talking with the local District Attorney about exactly how her mother died--it seems that Kate died of a morphine overdose. This, of course, creates a "flashback" type of movie. Did Ellen or George intentionally give Kate an overdose to help her end her suffering? The answer may surprise you.
The DVD comes with a few extras; I really enjoyed the featurette in which the principle actors discuss their feelings about the film and working with each other. We get information about the careers of the actors and producer Carl Franklin gives his thoughts about the movie as well.
Overall, One True Thing is a movie with brilliant performances by all the actors and the movie thoughtfully examines the relationship dynamics within the Gulden family. We learn that in many families, not just the Gulden family, things are not what they always seem to be; and we learn how Ellen slowly but surely becomes a better person for having had a chance to truly get to know her parents, especially the mother she used to devalue so much.
Movie Review: Full of surprises - if you haven't read the book - and why this is worth seeing even if you have
Summary: 5 Stars
Meryl Streep can command the screen in nearly any role and does so yet as as dying mother, Kate Gulden, who has put aside any passion for working outside the home in order to focus on her family. Her daughter, Ellen, is exactly the opposite, with all the ambition that she thinks her mother lacks. She is a rising star as a writer in New York and has questionable ethics, willing to do nearly anything to get ahead. She also has a reputation for being cold and unfeeling.
Ellen has never truly respected her mother but always adored her father, a college professor who seemed so much more heroic and larger than life than her mother. It is only when Ellen comes home, at her father George's insistence that she help take care of her mother that Ellen starts to see the family dynamics that eluded her all these years.
Rather than being a "simple housewife" Ellen begins to realize that her Kate Gulden is not only the heart of the home but perhaps the strongest one there. She is a major part of the community and doesn't just keep house but makes sure that those she loves are treated to warmth and love beyond what her father can provide. He is only able to be successful because she is there to watch his back. When Ellen tries to keep house like her mother she quickly becomes overwhelmed and understands that baking a meal or decorating a Christmas tree involves far more than going through the motions. These supposedly easy activities take true caring and commitment to others' happiness.
If you've read the book - as I have- perhaps you'll get additional pleasure from watching Streep and Zellweiger in their roles (William Hurt is also excellent). Some have called Zellweger stiff in her part but she is playing a woman who is shut off from her emotions and has a hard time facing harsh truths. Wouldn't such a woman be a bit restrained, apparently emotionless at times? She even turns away from her mother's pain until forced to confront it. In a way, only by taking care of her mother as she dies is Ellen able to evolve and soften, seeing how her mother is not as simple or restricted as Ellen always believed. Kate's life is indeed rich and complex - perhaps far more than Ellen's work and ambitions.
If you haven't read the book the ending may be a stunner. For that reason, I won't disclose anything about that. My favorite lines are:""It's so much easier to be happy. It's so much easier to choose to love the things that you have, instead of always yearning for what you're missing, or what it is that you're imagining you're missing. It is so much more peaceful." These lines make clear why Ellen's mother has chosen her path in life and I wish I could remember those lines every day of MY life rather than yearning for more.
I watch this film regularly and am always transformed by it.
Movie Review: Beautifully done
Summary: 5 Stars
This is an interesting story about a young woman, Ellen, (played by Renee Zellwegger) who has grown up idolizing her father, a writer and college professor. She follows in his footsteps, in a way, by going to New York where she has become a successful journalist. When she goes home, reluctantly, for the holidaes, she shows the impatience of a young woman of her generation and lifestyle for that of her mother (Meryl Streep). Her mother is a happy, stay at home mom, who excells at homemaking and dotes on making everyone else comfortable. Totally not-ok with Ellen.
When she is still at home, her mother receives a diagnosis of cancer and her father, (William Hurt) asks Ellen to give up her job and life in NY to stay with them and take care of the Mom.
What follows is a beautifully told tale of the shift in perspective of Ellen as she struggles to take care of her mother, not because she wants to, but because her father has asked and because it's the right thing to do. Along the way, her father falls off the pedestal and the whole family dynamic is re-arranged.
This could have been terribly maudlin but due to the sensitive direction, I guess, and the all-star cast, it succeeds as an extremely moving film. Streep is always good and Hurt is wonderful in a difficult, many layered role. If I have any criticism of the film, it's that I wish it had gone further into the character of the father. Maybe the book does. Renee Zellwegger does a fine job, too. Some people think she isn't convincing as the hard-nose career girl she's supposed to be, but I think she carries it off pretty well. She is at her best in the tremendously emotional scenes. The scene at the town Christmas tree lighting is priceless. (bring Kleenex)
I highly recommend the film, for its intelligent script, sensitive direction and first rate acting.
Movie Review: THE MAGNIFICENT MERYL
Summary: 5 Stars
Meryl Streep once again demonstrates the incredible acting ability she has shown and continues to show in her work. In ONE TRUE THING, she glows with life and love in the role of a dying mother, who wants her family to be a family. She is truly a star of the utmost brilliance and in reality should win an Oscar for any movie she's in...she's that good.
The movie does not approach death in the typical maudlin fashion. Based on the book by Anna Quindlen, the story revolves around Meryl's daughter, played brilliantly by Renee Zellweger, as she is forced to come home and take care of her mother at the demand, not request, of her father, also beautifully nuanced by William Hurt. Here you have three Oscar winners showing why they have the statues on their mantels.
I agree that the plot device of questioning Renee on the chance she helped her mother die is not necessary, but Zellweger's approach is so painfully etched, it doesn't hurt the movie. Tom Everett Scott as Brian, the son, is truly remarkable in an understated performance. His presence at the Christmas tree lighting is powerful in its silence. Hurt and Streep dancing to Bette Midler's "Do You Wanna Dance" is also very poignant and touching.
Director Carl Franklin keeps everything subtle and controlled, and isn't it ironic that Bette Midler sings the movie's theme song. I like syrupy ballads, so I appreciated this one, too.
ONE TRUE THING may be a "chick flick", but anyone who appreciates unparallelled acting and a good story will admire this film.
Movie Review: Ivory Tower "Pinhead" meets Reality, Confronts a True Life.
Summary: 5 Stars
The book and film is a great commentary on the self-obsession, self-absorption about nothing that many middle class families are stuck in a rut about. Professor Gulden (William Hurt) is a legend in his own mind, creating fiction that no one cares, no one reads or no one knows.
Professor Gulden has a phony, fake, false, make-believe job as a English college professor teaching classes where students read a few books and somehow they a "journey". Professor Gulden is the stereotypical egghead or rather pinhead found on many colleges campuses who hold fake jobs and do not actually make a living like everyone else. Gulden would rather live a world of fiction rather confront the true world.
However, once the Wife, Meryl Streep at her finest, gets cancer, the Egghead Professor has to deal with his true life. Cancer is real. Fiction is not. Her daughter, a journalist in New York, must put her so-called career on hold to take care of her mother.
All the arts, farts, literary, poetry crowd have a real air of importance. A cup of Starbucks and a few screeds of the pencil amounts to great poetry, masterpieces of writing for coffee-house crowd.
This is wonderful movie, subtle, genuine at the best. The title is about one "True Thing", not the phony, fiction world of the Professor. All the characters in the movie have phony, fake, make-believe jobs. When cancer struck, nature is not and will not be a fictionalized part of a egghead professor's life.