'Marvin's Room' goes deep into the American psyche<\/p>\n
By Laksmi Pamuntjak-Djohan<\/p>\n
JAKARTA (JP): There's something poignantly telling in the
\nlyrics of Marvin's Room's theme song:<\/p>\n
When the stars grow dim\/ and your dreams grow old\/ What do you
\ndo when the winter calls\/ and flowers fall from the garden walls\/
\nI come home to you\/ you come home to me\/ my love will be your
\nremedy\/ I'll choose you and you'll choose me\/ we'll be two
\ndaughters standing by the edge of the sea.<\/p>\n
When much of dysfunctional America is having problems with its
\nnuclear family, other relatives can barely claim a place in their
\nlives. Daughters break away from their family, sisters grow
\nestranged, parents get transported to nursing homes, couples
\nbreak up, single working mothers despair over their children,
\nsons grow up bitter and dying becomes a frightfully lonely
\naffair.<\/p>\n
In 1992, a short while after finishing his play Marvin's Room,
\nauthor Scott McPherson died of AIDS. Five years later, in the
\nelegant movie adaptation of his play, we see a nervous Bessie
\n(Diane Keaton) waiting to hear Dr. Wally (Robert de Niro) spell
\nout her fate. Stifling fear, she starts to prattle on about her
\nsick, geriatric father: \"He's been dying for almost 20 years, and
\ndoing it so slowly, so that I don't miss anything.\"<\/p>\n
But there is neither humor nor resentment in those words.
\nBessie is crushed, and the anxiety in her voice as she babbles on
\nabout her aunt Ruth is further indication that she has spent all
\nher life thinking of little else but her family. Any potential
\nillness that befalls her would seal their fates, too.<\/p>\n
Aging certainly brings its own problems, loneliness and
\nterminal diseases to name just two. Told she has leukemia, Bessie
\nis no exception. Yet this opening scene, although startling in
\nits toneless finality, drives the point home as the
\ntransitoriness of life suddenly explodes as well as implodes --
\nstark, suffocating, but frighteningly real.<\/p>\n
No wonder that the way veteran stage-director Jerry Zaks
\nframes that crucial moment is almost searing in its effect, for
\nthe implications of Bessie's horror is the heart of Marvin's
\nRoom.<\/p>\n
Following a quarrel 20 years earlier with her only sister, Lee
\n(Meryl Streep), Bessie has spent most of her adult life caring
\nfor her bedridden father Marvin (Hume Cronyn) and her senile aunt
\nRuth (Gwen Verdon). Lee, who is averse to any form of familial
\nresponsibility, chooses independence, and ends up with a broken
\nlife. Her eldest son, Hank (Leonardo DiCaprio), who has just
\nburned their house down, would rather hole up in a mental
\ninstitution than be anywhere near her.<\/p>\n
The two sisters rarely spoke in the 20 years that passed.
\nThey are as estranged as they are strangers to each other.<\/p>\n
Yet Bessie has little choice but to ask Lee to come down to
\nFlorida as her chance of survival depends on a bone-marrow
\ntransplant from a family member. Along with her two kids, Hank
\nand Charlie (Hal Scardino), Lee returns home to a slow and
\npainful reconciliation with her sister until they both become
\ndaughters once more.<\/p>\n
No sentimentalism<\/p>\n
Although the subject of terminal illness has long been an
\noverdramatized staple of melodrama, there is nothing sentimental
\nor manipulative about Marvin's Room.<\/p>\n
For one, this is a character study, not a study about illness.
\nAnd then there is Bessie herself -- a woman so positive that
\nsundered relationships cannot deter her from going about the
\nbusiness of living unselfishly and uncomplainingly. Unlike
\ncountless \"liberated\" women who feel that caring for a family
\nmember is equal to relinquishing one's independence, she doesn't
\nfeel bereft of anything (\"I have been so lucky to be able to love
\nsomeone so much\"). Even in her waning days, her carpe diem is
\nsimply to go on doing what she's been doing all her life without
\nperceiving it as a \"sacrifice\". Her liberation, indeed, lies in
\nher enormous capacity to love.<\/p>\n
Thankfully, there is no dehumanizing deathbed scene. Instead,
\nthe movie's entire magic lies in Marvin's enchanted smile as
\nBessie plays with the mirror by his bed, as if in the scattered
\nflickers of light he sees Providence at the end of a dark tunnel.<\/p>\n
Granted, there are a few quibbles. Okay, so Robert de Niro is
\nbarely there (after all, he gets to produce the movie). But
\ngiven the focus on Hank, why have Charlie at all? And then
\nthere's the little-seen Marvin, a trifle odd given that it is his
\n\"room\" around which the story is centered.<\/p>\n
But shortchanging characters is almost inevitable because the
\npotential for distraction is tremendous. First, the side issues:
\nLee coming to terms with reality, Lee despairing over Hank. Hank
\ntrying to make sense of a family he's never known. Bessie
\nreaching out to the \"son\" she never has. Second, there's
\nBessie's illness itself. And last but not least, there's Marvin,
\na heartrending vision in his incontinence, speaking not words but
\nsounds only Bessie can comprehend. Still, the movie never strays
\nfrom its premise.<\/p>\n
Keaton delivers<\/p>\n
As we all know by now, an A-list cast alone doesn't a film
\nmake. DiCaprio's anxieties, for instance, are obvious, making his
\nHank a tad artificial. Although he found his fame playing
\ntroubled youths (This Boys' Life), everything he does now will
\nseem a letdown after his mesmerizing portrayal of Romeo in
\nWilliam Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Likewise with Streep.
\nAlthough her versatility is legendary, her bitter and guilt-
\nridden Lee simply pales in comparison to Keaton's heartfelt,
\ndelicately nuanced Bessie.<\/p>\n
In fact, nothing that Keaton has done throughout her long and
\nillustrious career approaches the honest enchantment of Bessie.
\nImbued with none of Keaton's ditziness of yesteryear, Bessie is
\npure and beautiful even in her vulnerability (after she faints in
\nDisneyland, she cries to Lee, \"I was afraid to close my eyes,
\nafraid that I won't wake up\").<\/p>\n
Predictability aside, Marvin's Room is another graceful and
\nuplifting triumph by Miramax, and one that burrows right into the
\ncore of the American psyche.<\/p>",
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