OVP: One True Thing (1998)

Film: One True Thing (1998)
Stars: Meryl Streep, Renee Zellweger, William Hurt, Tom Everett Scott, Lauren Graham
Director: Carl Franklin
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Actress-Meryl Streep)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

I've been really loving the theme weeks for reviews-we've done it twice now, and so I'm gonna make that official, at least as long as we're quarantining and I'm able to keep up the current pace I have of watching so many movies, particularly focusing on Oscar nominees.  Each weekday afternoon we'll have a movie that's based on a theme for the week, all five movies having nothing (intentional) in common other than a year or Oscar category or something else connecting them.  We'll still do regular articles in the mornings & on weekends (and possibly throw in the occasional review for a film that I can't find a theme for), but I like the idea of trying to link together some of my recent viewings during the week to keep you guessing on what might come next (and to keep me focused as I'm overcoming a mountain of movies while on quarantine).  This week, we're going to return to the theme of Best Actress, and have all five of our reviews come from that particular category, and what better way to kick off such a category than with the queen of Best Actress, Meryl Streep, in one of her less-remembered nominated performances, One True Thing.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is set in the late 1980's, and Ellen (Zellweger), is home for her beloved father George's (Hurt) birthday.  Ellen is trying to be just like her father-he's a well-known novelist and literature professor at Princeton, and she's now an ambitious journalist at New York magazine.  Her mother Kate (Streep) is the antithesis of Ellen, and Ellen doesn't do much to hide her disdain for her mother, a homemaker who gets great joy from her group of "Minnies" (they decorate and plan town events for holidays & charities).  We soon discover that Kate has cancer, and that George wants Ellen to move home to take care of her mother, as he cannot with his job as a professor (and while he's writing his long-dormant second novel).  While home, Ellen learns more about her mother, and has an appreciation for what she has done through the years for her family, and has a growing animosity for her father, whom she learns eschews responsibility, has a drinking problem, and frequently has cheated on her mother.  We watch this change-of-heart as Kate becomes sicker & sicker, eventually succumbing to her illness but during an autopsy report we learn that she died not of cancer, but of a morphine overdose, which the closing scene of the film let's us know was self-inflicted (Kate no longer wanting to suffer).

The film is fascinating to me in a narcissistic way as it takes a look at the relationship that you develop with your parents if you're lucky enough to live to know them in your thirties.  At that point in your life you realize that you're both adults, and while there is always a sense of "parents wanting to take care of you" the discipline/disappointment aspect has likely disappeared in some of your life choices, and you get to know each other not only as friends, but as people.  You get to learn that your parents are human beings with not only faults & foibles, but also ones who have different tastes & interests that aren't, well, you.  This is an under-explored topic in movies, and I liked that it felt fleshed out in the film.

The movie's central calling card, though, is Meryl Streep.  I love Meryl always, but I will admit that I prefer straight-up dramatic Meryl, a version of the actress that basically disappeared the second she became a box office icon with The Devil Wears Prada.  Meryl is always good, but I think since 2006 her performances have either needed some sort of wink or gimmick in order for Streep to sign on, and it's fascinating to watch her explore a character like Kate, seemingly simple without many layers, and not abandon that character as we learn that, like all people, there's something under-the-surface.  The great monologue late in the film, where she admits that she knows about her husband's infidelities and her daughter's antipathy toward her is dynamite, but it wouldn't work if she hadn't set us up with intrigue, about questions about a bright, open character.  It's a reminder of why Streep became a legend in the first place-she was really, truly that good.

The rest of the movie pales in comparison.  Zellweger & Hurt are both good actors, but neither of them bring the homework that Streep does to their portrayals, and with Zellweger that's a problem since she's really the "screen-time" lead (even though it's a two female lead film-today Streep might well have gone supporting in an era of category fraud).  There's not enough in-depth look at this character-for a character with a lot of intellectual curiosity, it seems odd that she waited this long to learn more about her mother, and the final sequences between she & her father don't have enough punch (the film flits away after Streep dies) because we aren't vested in these characters.  But this is still a terrific, earned nomination for Streep, one that is forgotten but really shouldn't be in her long pantheon with Oscar.