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Cancer Major 
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TITLE |
One
True Thing (1998) |
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DISABILITY |
Cancer
Terminal |
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NOTES |
Intelligent,
complex drama about a New England family. |
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The
domesticated mother (Streep) is first seen looking like |
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Dorothy from
Oz. It turns out there's a costume birthday party |
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for dad
Hurt). Ellen (Zellweger) is shown as so |
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undomesticated she can't slice bread without cutting herself. |
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Mum and dad
appear to get on very well after eons of |
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marriage. Then mum
goes into hospital with cancer. She has an operation
and may need therapy. Dad pressures Ellen to leave her
job and move back home to look after mum, and him. Mum at
first doesn't even know she has come to stay. |
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And dad is
hardly sensitive to Ellen's feelings. |
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Mum is some
kind of furniture restorer. Dad is a well known |
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literary
critic. Ellen is a journalist on a New York magazine. |
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Ellen proves
herself hopeless at managing the household. |
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She's
obviously been spoiled like her father and didn't approve of her
mother emulating a domestic goddess. Mum begins
to be in great pain. She takes pills and uses a heating pad.
New drugs mean she can't drive and her speech is slurred.
Eventually she has a nurse to help manage the pain.
Meanwhile dad who is absent so often is discovered by Ellen to be
having an affair with a student. |
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Mum's cancer
progresses faster than expected. Nothing |
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more can be
done and mum is given morphine for the pain. |
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She is
forced to use a wheelchair but shrieks "I'm not |
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There are
distressing scenes as she gets worse and rather |
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suddenly she
dies from an overdose. |
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Throughout
the film we have seen Ellen being questioned |
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about her
mother's death which has been certified as 'natural'. |
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This device
somewhat spoils the film. We briefly see Ellen |
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crushing
pills. But she says she didn't assist her mother. Dad |
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says he
didn't. And in the end we simply don't know. |
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Notes
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