One True Thing Review
by "jasanfor" (jasanfor AT MCI2000 DOT com)September 25th, 1998
ONE TRUE THING
Directed by Carl Franklin
Who wouldn't want a mom like radiant Kate Gulden?
She's the queen of arts and crafts, with domestic skills that could put Martha Stewart to shame -- just see how she embroiders pillows and decorates cribs like nobody's business.
Besides, she's genuinely nice, a veritable fountain of love and understanding; this is the kind of mother who must have packed cheerful little notes in every nutritionally balanced lunch she sent to school. When someone breaks a plate in her kitchen, Kate doesn't rant or weep. She kindly asks the offender to save the pieces for use in her mosiac table.
When Kate's daughter Ellen looks at her, though, it's not with affection. In fact, she's quietly disgusted. This is a woman who's squandered her potential, thinks Ellen, a New York Magazine reporter who'd rather eat her word processor than cook up a batch of Mom's zucchini soup.
Ellen is instead awed by her father George, an English professor who won a National Book Award years ago and tells her inspirational things like "When I was working at The New Yorker, I would spend all day working on one sentence." George has a pithy line for every situation -- too bad most of them are unattributed steals from James Thurber.
"The one thing that I never wanted to do was live my mother's life," Ellen (Renee Zellweger) confesses early on in "One True Thing," adapted from Anna Quindlen's keenly observed best-seller. But circumstances force her to do exactly that, as Kate (Meryl Streep) becomes ill and Ellen is coerced by workaholic George (William Hurt) into putting her career on hold to return home to play nursemaid and fill-in housekeeper.
Quindlen's book was told from Ellen's point of view, with the parents serving mostly as a backdrop for her story. Karen Croner's screenplay gives George and Kate greater depth and color while jettisoning the small-town scandal set-up that framed the novel's action. Ellen is also a bit easier to empathize with onscreen than she is on the page, where she often comes across as shallow and uncomfortably self-absorbed.
Zellweger, fresh from her outstanding work in the little-seen "A Price Above Rubies," dazzles again as she follows Ellen's arc from condescending careerist to enlightened daughter. Playing the same league with seasoned pros such as Streep and Hurt must be a formidable challenge, but Zellweger admirably rises to the ocassion.
George's aloofness and inner despair are easily communicated by the brilliant Hurt, whose talent has been shamefully wasted throughout most of this decade in second-rate movies like "Trial By Jury" and "Mr. Wonderful." Obviously some of the production team had a sense of humor about Hurt's career since "One True Thing" manages to include a timely "Lost In Space" joke and a copy of Anne Tyler's "The Accidental Tourist" is prominently featured on George's bookshelf.
But the movie ultimately belongs to Streep, who illuminates the extraordinary soul inside an everyday woman. Streep understands Kate feels just as removed from Ellen as Ellen does from Kate, and the actress hints at a well of suppressed jealousy and slight antagonistic tendencies behind Kate's pleasant persona. When Kate hosts a costume party dressed as Dorothy from "The Wizard of Oz," we're unsure whether it's because she truly believes "there's no place like home" or if it's just a clever way to jab at her daughter's ego.
Likewise George, who comes off as the stereotypical philandering academic in the book, gets a more sympathetic reading in the film. So much of Croner's writing is smart and straightforward, it's a shame she couldn't have freshened up the character of Ellen's faithless boyfriend Jordan (Nicky Katt) or given brother Brian (Tom Everett Scott) more personality. They're the film's only glaring weaknesses.
There's a fine line between the touching and the saccharine, and it's one many filmmakers find extraordinarily difficult to navigate. Just look at movies like "Simon Birch" and "Deep Impact," which do everything short of stomping on your toes in an effort to jerk tears.
Under Carl Franklin's low-key direction "One True Thing" succeeds where these pictures fail by maintaining its dignity and, just as importantly, its honesty. You won't cry out of a sense of obligation, but because Franklin and his incredible cast drive the material straight to the heart. By the way, don't bother with tissues: For the last half-hour of this picture, you'd be better off bringing a sponge instead.
James Sanford
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