One True Thing

Rating:
Summary: Ivory Tower "Pinhead" meets Reality, Confronts a True Life.
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent!
Review: This is a great movie with great actors!!
Very touching story about a family which struggles through in their own way, and as we find out in the end they have done the best they can considering the circumstances. William Hurt, Renee Zilweger and Meryl Streep shine in this one. Love and honesty are big themes in this picture.

Rating:
Summary: THE MAGNIFICENT MERYL
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: It Goes Where Most Aren't Willing...
Review: The first time I watched this film it was the 3rd movie we were watching in a marathon. I promised myself I would let myself fall asleep...and with the slow beginning I thought I was well on my way to dreamland. HOWEVER,something about the movie kept my attention, and by the end I was astounded by new revelations.

I watched this film again recently, and again I was amazed at all that this movie accomplishes in a very understated way. At a time when I personally feel frustrated at all the preachiness I see going on in literature and movies, I am a champion of this masterpiece. This film engaged me, brought me through a rich journey, and left me as a changed person...all without telling me what I should take away from the film.

For a little more background, the storyline is as follows: an up-and-coming NYC journalist (Zellweger) goes home to celebrate her father's birthday in a small town. She despises the vulgar simplicity of the town, her mother, the costume party, etc. However, she absolutely idolizes her father, who is a well-known English professor at a nearby university.

However, while she is at home, her beloved father coerces her to put her budding career on hold so she can take care of her mother (Streep), who she learns is battling cancer. Zellweger's character is openly angered & offended by this request...which is just the beginning of script filled with a refreshingly honest look at our ugly, selfish & occassionally brilliant emotions in such situations.

In coming to stay with her mother, Zellweger continues to despise the ignoble life of women's meetings, town decorating, baking, etc. that she is forced to join. Up to this point in the movie, everything is as you might predict or expect in the storyline. However, where the movie goes from here is absolutely phenomenal. As this daughter lives in her mom's world and begins to understand her mother's very understated, unacademic life, she is opened to whole new worlds of humanity. At the same time, as her opinion of her mother rises, her opinion of her father comes into question. As the movie explores this whole dynamic, more twists come and this daughter is overwhelmed by the complexity of relationships & adult life. No one is right. No one is wrong. Nothing is simple, and everyone struggles as he fights his own demons.

At the very end, this movie shows (not preaches but shows) an absolutely breath-taking portrayal of love well after the rose-tinted glasses have come off. I don't want to give anything away, but it's when Streep wraps her arms around her husband after his late night out. After being barraged with so many images of Hollywood love, the daughter (and the audience) is speechless at a protrayal of deep, full, rich love that has grown in the face of so much pain & struggle of life.

This might admittedly be more of a girl's movie than a guy's. One of my guy friends only stayed awake because of the DA interrogation of the daughter interspersed throughout the film. However, many, many of my girlfriends who hate chick flicks were as pierced by this movie as I was. (Many of them have also dismissed their mother's maternal role in their lives and have idolized their fathers.)

I simply can't express in words how wonderful and paniful and majestic this piece is. And it's so refreshing because it goes where so many films aren't willing to go - to the stuff of our true, everyday lives & situations that aren't glamorous but are filled with ugly emotions, pride, and underestimations of others.