One True Thing

I'm not telling you anything you don't already know: the book is better. I mean, it always is. That's why I really didn't care for this movie at all when I first saw it. But, then, I saw One True Thing again and realized that it is best when it stands alone from the book. That, and it's actually pointedly close to real life and completely relateable on a mother-daughter basis.

Anna Quindlen wrote One True Thing, and I believe it referenced the real-life illness of her mother along with Quindlen's daughterly duties to care for her. The truth is prevalent on every page. Quindlen never shies away from revealing how difficult and self-shattering it can be to do what is right and what is expected as opposed to what you actually want to do. It's all so tied together. That honesty was apparent and intimate on the page, and I found it difficult to translate that emotion of Quindlen's to the silver screen. However, the movie offers the same types of raw moments that are prevalent in mother-daughter relationships, which are sometimes difficult and painful to navigate.

One True Thing stars Renee Zellwegger as Ellie, a Harvard-educated, ambitious New York writer. She is different from her mother (played by Meryl Streep), a homemaker without the sophisticated smarts that her daughter possesses. Ellie must come home to run the household when her mother is diagnosed with cancer.

When I saw this movie, I was a teenager and did not really understand the dynamics of a mother-daughter relationship in the context of adulthood (of both women). And, now that I am grown, I appreciate One True Thing in a whole new way. When your mother is content and happy to raise babies and keep a house, you, as a daughter, feel deviant (and, I'm talking about the bad kind of deviant here) and maybe even unwomanly for first despising that ambition and seeing the existence of a homemaker as trite and oppressive, and then feeling guilty for wanting a bigger life and denouncing the woman (and your mom's behavior) of rearing a child who has subsequently sought those big goals and big life. Those are the types of things that Ellie deals with in regard to her mother. I especially commend Zellwegger here for allowing Ellie to be a little ugly in her judgments of her mother as well as letting Ellie be so vulnerable as to question the validity of the path she has taken, which is at the other extreme of her mother's.

I do admit that this movie--and, especially, the book--is more meaningful if your mother actually does become ill and you take on the responsibility of caring for her. In that case, you'll see how incredibly hard it is to step into the role of caretaker and homemaker when that goal was never your goal to begin with. Regardless if you are encountered with that sort of situation or not, One True Thing is an honest look at relationships. I know everyone says mother-daughter relationships are difficult, but this movie reveals this in a new way. Ellie is forced to go home, forced to confront the truths about her family and the ways in which she always regarded her mother. Sometimes, we're not always right about the past. It can be insightful to actually acknowledge the truth, no matter the consequences.