Marvin's Room (1997, VHS)

Based on 1991 the off-Broadway play by Scott McPherson (1959-1992) and directed by Broadway director Jerry Zaks (whose only other film credit is for directing the television version of House of Blue Leaves ), this 1996 film has the look of a made-for-tv-movie about a long-divided family confronted by a crisis of the disease of its key member. It has better music (by Rachel Portman) than made-for-tv movies, and has an outstanding, star-studded cast being more subtle than usual for most of them.

Bessie (Diane Keaton) has been caring for her father (Hume Cronyn, unfortunately mute) and a mildly demented soap-opera-addict aunt (Gwen Verdon, fortunately anything but mute) when Bessie is diagnosed with leukemia.

She and her gently befuddled physician (Robert De Niro!) hope for a bone marrow transplant from a family member. The candidates are long-estranged sister Lee (Meryl Streep) who abandoned the caretaking to Bessie, and her two sons. The two sons are as different as their mother is from her sister The younger one, Charlie (Hal Scardino) is a quiet bookworm who seems to have some interest in following his mother s career in cosmetology. The elder, Hank (Leonardo di Caprio), is interested in mechanics. . . and matches. He is confined to a mental hospital after having burned down the family home. He maintains a cult of the father his mother left. His rage at her are literally incendiary.

I find Keaton annoying even when she is shtick-free, suffering nobly, and even sensitive to others, as here. Moreover, films about family reconciliation to face terminal illness are far from being my favorite genre. Indeed, they make me very skittish. I nonetheless found Marvin s Room fairly compelling, mostly because of the ensemble of actors.

I also found the explanation for Hank s pathologies too pat, but have to admit that telling him what he doesn t want to hear makes for a powerful scene between Streep and DiCaprio. Each is the black sheep of a generation and their conflicts seem totally convincing.

I don t think that Keaton can hold the screen with Streep but DiCaprio can. Although Keaton is cast as the sweet and self-sacrificing sister, Streep as the selfish, trashy one (Lee), it is not hard to find Keaton grating and to sympathize with Streep in their scenes together. You know that Lee is selfish, but Bessie is so self-sacrificing that she would make most saints feel guilty. Moreover, she is passive-aggressive to Lee for a while. And lack of contact over the preceding two decades is something neither one did alone.

Keaton is far more sensitive in dealing with the nephew she has just met (and is hoping might save her life). DiCaprio is less belligerent with his aunt than with his mother, but convincing in his edgy relationships with both and his unedgy relationship with his nerdy younger brother.

Hank driving on the beach seems a bit clich d to me, too easy an epiphany of bonding with his aunt. For me the most extraordinary scenes are Streep trimming her sister s wig and the final scene when Keaton is patiently entertaining her father using a mirror to refract sunlight around the room and onto an unfamiliar presence in the sickroom.

Comic relief is supplied by Streep s harshness (as in explaining this never-before-mentioned sister to Hank: You know how every goddamn Christmas I say, Looks like we didn't get a card again this year from your Aunt Bessie ? Well, that's my sister Bessie ), Robert De Niro patiently suffering the ineptness of his own brother Bob(Dan Hedaya), and by Gwen Verdon as a mildly demented aunt devoted to a soap opera. Verdon gets the great line Which one of you handsome boys is in a mental institution?

Side Notes

As in This Boy's Life and What s Eating Gilbert Grape, DiCaprio was outstanding in this pre- Titanic film. The Streep film that comes to mind as being the closest to her role here is A Cry in the Dark in which her fitness as a mother is widely and unfairly doubted (Hank is the main doubter herein).

McPherson died of AIDS in 1992. In the program for the play a year earlier, he wrote, We all take care of each other, the less sick caring for the most sick. But at times, an unbelievably harsh fate can be transcended by a simple act of love. I am not sure about transcended. Cushioned certainly. . . His own experience shows that the we is not only families of blood.