Two Weeks
The death of a loved one is
quite possibly the most personal and devastating experience one can live
through.
Two Weeks looks at
this intensely vulnerable moment in any family, in which four grown children
congregate at their mother's home as she is in the last stages of ovarian
cancer.
The mother is played by
Sally Field, who gives a brave and heartbreaking performance as a strong
woman whose body has failed her and yet she feels a need to be strong and
positive for her children.
The children,
unfortunately, are not so well drawn out. They are more like types
than actual characters. You have the arty zen filmmaker (Ben Chaplin),
the workaholic executive (Tom Cavanaugh), the bratty youngest son (Glenn
Howerton) and the spinsterish daughter (Julianne Nicholson) who has stayed
with the mother when all the others moved off.
Of course, this film makes
a huge tactical error, or maybe it is just the marketing, but they are
trying to push this as a comedy-drama. Yes, in tragedy people do find
a certain gallows humor to survive, however the gravity of the situation and
the specter of the impending death trivializes and blunts most of the family
squabbles and light moments.
Still, even though the film
is often manipulative and sometimes awkward, having personally lived
through a similar experience with my grandmother's death of cancer, I can
safely say that they do capture the helplessness and sense of frustration of
a family member's slow, steady decline. The scenes detailing the
constant decay of Field's last days are sadly all too realistic.
Of course whether or not
you want to vicariously experience this loss when you don't absolutely have
to is certainly open to debate. If you can withstand that,
Two Weeks
tells a tragically human story. It's far
from perfect, but then again death always is.
Jay S. Jacobs
Copyright ©2007 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved.
Posted: September 8, 2007.
