Review of One True Thing (1998) by Frances H — 24 May 2014

I wasn't so sure how I would feel about this piece, but it proved itself to be important. Of course, to a degree, but it's still glorious.

One True Thing stars Meryl Streep, Renee Zellweger and William Hurt. This centers around Ellen Gulden, a young, ambitious yet hard woman who works for a newspaper and is very successful at it. Her life seems to be ideal and normal, a job she loves, a boyfriend she has a passion for (it doesn't feel like love) and a girlfriend she hangs out with. She lives the desirable life of a person in their twenties. This is all interrupted one day when she gets a call from her father, Kate.

He calls her and tells her about a birthday party her father, George, is having. Annoyed and feeling forced, Ellen decides to go. Kate appears and is genuinely a soulful, extremely delightful woman of two children and a seemingly lovely husband. She is bright and a joy to be around, making you want her to be your own mother or at the very least, a family member. But Ellen only sees her as an irritating, stubborn pushover. You can see this from her attitude towards her and begin to feel sympathy for Kate and rather frustrated with Ellen. Not really angry, but frustrated.

It is clear Ellen adores her father, a middle aged college professor. As the story progresses, Ellen realizes and finds out that Kate is ill and eventually diagnosed with terminal cancer. George forces her to stay with her mother and she reluctantly does. As she spends time with her ailing mother as her caretaker, she slowly realizes that she is becoming her daughter too. And as she becomes closer to Kate, she notices her father's sneaky acts as he is cheating with a student.

But of course, the best performance is Meryl Streep. She never comes off as bad or mediocre or even simply as OK. She enters Kate's world of bottled up pain and shining nature. She is like a warm blanket you climb into bed with at the end of the day. Her work paid off with her 11th Oscar nomination, which she would receive seven seven more in the future.

Renee Zellweger seems as if she is in a simple soap opera in the beginning, but she is perfectly fine as a regular woman who has problems with keeping relationships with people who are close to her. Hurt is solid but seems a bit dull in other scenes. The film itself sounds like a typical old family soap opera, but comes off as uncanny and intriguing. It's not about troubles in families, but about how to improve them.