Everyone and their mother
“We need to talk about Mom.” That’s the narrative fulcrum wielded by actor and now firsttime writer-director Elizabeth Chomko, who digs deep into her personal history for this story of a family dealing with dementia. But a strong screenplay and some top-notch talent mean we get more than one character’s point of view. Chomko’s sympathies are liberally dispensed.
The story kicks off as Ruth (Blythe Danner), suffering from worsening dementia, wanders from her Chicago home on a winter’s night. Husband Burt (Robert Forster) goes in search and calls son Nick (Michael Shannon) to help. Nick’s phone rings with a red-alert klaxon when it’s his father calling; they clearly don’t have many casual chats.
Nick in turn contacts his sister, Bridget (Hilary Swank), who flies in from California with her troubled university-age daughter (Taissa Farmiga). But as often happens when grown siblings get together, old childish habits resurface, enacted with adult strength and consequences.
You’ve seen these types before. Bridget is the bridge-builder and peacekeeper of the family, while Burt is a gruff pragmatist, whose favourite phrase is that there are “no bells and whistles” in romance. He’s also fond of: “You know what your problem is?”
Nick has picked up more than a little of that style, which is why father and son clash like electrically charged particles. At one point they go several rounds over whether Nick is a bar-owner or a bartender. Truth is he’s both.
Almost lost amid the fireworks is Ruth, who Danner plays just about perfectly — shaky and withdrawn. The coping technique of the addled is often to shrug or laugh off their mistakes, even when they’re socially awkward; in a scene we hear about but don’t see, Ruth briefly mistakes her son for an old boyfriend.
Movies about dementia are nothing new; think of Julianne Moore in Still Alice, Sarah Polley’s Away From Her, Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman in The Savages and, if you must, The Notebook.
Where Chomko’s script excels is the way it sketches out the family dynamic and all its evermoving, ever-changing clockwork parts. Bridget’s marriage is rocky, Nick’s relationship even more so; it’s a case of the messedup leading the messed-up.