One True Thing (1998)

Touches You

It's complicated... I really like the directing, acting and writing but, there are issues with the way it's shot that I just can't deny. As much as I love the storytelling and the fantastic performance but, there are also certain scenes that didn't need to exist.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

Ellen Gulden (Renée Zellweger) is a driven NY interview writer. Her father George (William Hurt) is a writer and professor. Her mother Kate (Meryl Streep) gets cancer and Ellen returns home to help out. Only she's not good at it, and has little in common with her housewife mother.The movie probably needs a bit of comedy to lighten the mood. The subject matter is fairly dark. There is cancer, family dysfunction, and a murder investigation. Renée Zellweger could have shined in comedy. Instead she and Hurt have such angry persona that they are hard to like. The great performance comes from Meryl Streep. This could have been a bad melodrama. Meryl Streep makes it infinitely more. She breathes life into this dying character. There are incredible scenes in this that verifies her as the most talent actresses working.

A story of a family coming together in the hardest of times, Meryl Streep gives another amazing performance as a mother who is stricken with cancer, she is a doting housewife and the family begins to fall apart as she is the glue that holds the family together. As Meryl's character, Kate, gets sicker the family's problems are unravelled.Meryl Streep is an exceptional actress and her emotional range in this movie is amazing to see. She goes from a fun-loving, outgoing mother to a more withdrawn and frightened but strong character through out this film's journey. Though the film does focus on Ellen, Kate's daughter, the performances by all the main and supporting actors are very strong. This has remained a top favourite of mine since i saw about 9 years ago. This is a film worth watching!

This film is based on Anna Quindlen's novel about a Harvard graduate who returns home to care for her ailing mother played by who else but Meryl Street. Her daughter is played by Renee Zellweger. Her husband and family patriarch is played by William Hurt who is an English professor in a college town and department chair with his own secrets. The film was filmed in New Jersey and at a professor's house in Madison, New Jersey not far from Meryl Streep's hometown of Bernards, NJ. The film was filmed in New Jersey and featured a lot of New York City based actors like the wonderful Sloane Shelton and Marcia Jean Kurtz. Lauren Graham is featured as one of Ellen's best friend. The story is the usual-based and Meryl Streep does give a terrific performance. She makes the film come alive but she has a terrific supporting cast that makes a mediocre script come alive.

Apart from the DA (James Eckhouse), and a brief appearing woman who is convincingly sympathetic to Ellen Gulden's (Renee Zellweger)plight, Ellen herself is the only convincing character--and likable character in the movie. She is the one, not her dying mother, who should be and is--the one true thing. it's not only in the role, in Zellweger's acting, but also in the plot itself.... Until, the plot turns against itself--and makes the mother the "one true thing" in the eyes of her weak willed, shallow husband who can do nothing right for his wife or daughter. The daughter perceives what the viewer perceives, but such intelligent perceptions must give way to the shallow sentiment of the husband who is blanked out on both the realities of his wife and daughter. To boot, the one powerful scene in this whole movie, when Ellen confronts her father's cruelty, is given the lie at the end. Ellen is just another young strong woman who must be tamed into conformity by a crybaby father. A very flawed movie--so flawed as to be called a bore and not worth the time.