ONE TRUE THING

Meryl Streep has received an unprecedented 21 Oscar acting nominations. That’s 9 more than any other actor has ever received. It was for this reason that I set my 2022 goal of viewing all her performances that I hadn’t already seen. One of her Oscar-nominated acting performances was in 1998’s One True Thing. And very deservedly so.

Ellen Gulden (Renee Zellweger) is a writer in New York City. She follows in the footsteps of the father she idolizes, George Gulden (William Hurt), who is a published novelist and now a professor at Princeton University. When her mother, Kate (Meryl Streep), is diagnosed with cancer, Ellen is asked by her father to move back home to help take care of her. Reluctantly Kate agrees to do so, but her decision is more about pleasing her father than actually helping her mother.

Ellen’s mother is an individual who seeks to bring joy, companionship, and empathy to others. When Ellen grew up, she saw her mother’s existence as silly and one undeserving of respect or appreciation. But as Ellen spends more time with her mother Kate (and with Kate’s close friends), her understanding of life, and what is truly important, begins to change. Ellen begins to learn all her mother is, as she simultaneously comes to understand all her father isn’t.

This film is not perfect. It relies much too much on exposition as it opens to establish its characters and starting point. But that’s easily forgiven once the story begins unfolding. The acting is superb. Streep radiates the human experience throughout her character’s decline, just as Zellweger portrays the anguish of having to re-evaluate all her character had previously determined were examples of a successful life. Hurt has the unenviable job of playing a character that, without Kate’s light, is quite frankly a loser.

I am not ashamed to say that I cried often during the second half of this movie. It brilliantly expresses the universal experience of when a child comes to understand that her parents are just as human and fallible as she is. Huge kudos to the film’s Director Hal Franklin and the amazing cast for such a moving experience.