BEFORE: Julianne Nicholson carries over from "I, Tonya", and she'll be here tomorrow, too, for another film on this same topic. She's in ALL three films in my Mother's Day trilogy. And since death has been a running theme this year - everything from dead children to dead spouses, and even a dead uncle ("A Good Year"), it seems only fitting that Mother's Day should be devoted to a dying mother. I don't mean to bring the room down, it's just the way the chain came together this year.
THE PLOT: Four adult siblings gather at their dying mother's house in North Carolina for what they expect to be a quick, last goodbye. Instead, they find themselves trapped together for two weeks.
AFTER: It was tough to watch this one at times, and my mother is alive and well. But there's something universal about realizing that your parents are mortal, and coming together when they're sick to try to help them get well, and if that's not possible, then to somehow make them more comfortable if you can. (And in the spirit of fairness, I'm going to circle back around to this topic for Father's Day also.)
There's another fractured narrative here, as footage of the family matriarch in the last stage of her life are intermixed with interview footage from a few years previous, as her son, who's some kind of documentary filmmaker, was apparently trying to capture her life and stories on film, possibly while she was in the early stages of her disease, or perhaps just for posterity or to create some kind of family record. It doesn't really matter, but it does allow us to see this character at her brightest, before the cancer took over. Otherwise it might be tough to see Sally Field's character just lying in bed, unable to eat food, and gradually losing one motor function after another.
But death is not the end, not exactly, when there are four children who need to parse through her last requests in order to determine what kind of memorial service would be most appropriate, and also the best way to divide up her belongings. To do this, they're forced to interact with each other in a new way, and try not to fall back into their childhood patterns, thereby annoying each other and impeding progress.
This film probably preceded the big family funeral film trend, the one that includes "August: Osage County" and "This Is Where I Leave You", since it came out in 2006. The three sons here have wives or girlfriends that range from incredibly supportive (taking care of the kids on the other coast while they attend to their dying mother) to incredibly self-centered (one treats this entire process as an inconvenience, and makes it all about HERSELF and her needs...)
Well, it is what it is, I'm going to compare and contrast this one with tomorrow's movie on the same topic, only with Meryl Streep in place of Sally Field.
Also starring Sally Field (last seen in "Hooper"), Ben Chaplin (last seen in "The Legend of Tarzan"), Tom Cavanagh (last seen in "Yogi Bear"), Glenn Howerton (last seen in "Serenity"), Clea Duvall (last seen in "The Faculty"), James Murtaugh (last seen in "Blue Thunder"), Michael Hyatt, Susan Misner, Jenny O'Hara (last seen in "Matchstick Men").
RATING: 5 out of 10 tuna casseroles (made with cream of mushroom soup)
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