'night, Mother

"'Night Mother" is a film for those who appreciate a good, thought provoking drama. Anne Bancroft, the Italian/American actress from NYC plays a Southern woman with gusto. Sissy Spacek as her daughter is excellent as a woman who has had enough of life & has decided to end hers. It's hard to decide who you feel more sorry for. My heart tends to go out more to the Bancroft character because Spacek's character has finally found some peace with her decision to end her life. This movie is very intense & the music on the soundtrack is beautiful & adds to it's emotional impact.

Only people who have seriously considered suicide as an option can fully understand this movie. It is dark but it is from the perspective of a realist and is performed brilliantly. Both actresses are totally believable. I saw this movie in "87" and it has haunted me ever since.

Wow, here it is almost 20 years after this film was made, and I am just finding out about it. I accidentally stumbled upon it on a cable station one afternoon a few months ago. It has taken me many months since then to find the title and details! Now that I have found the title I am so glad. I hope that I can one day see it again. However, the first and only time I saw this movie I was in the middle of suffering from a deep depression myself. When I watched this movie I almost felt liberated. Through the whole movie I just kept imagining how liberating it must feel to have one person to reveal these painful, awful thoughts to. Everyone I had been in contact with tells me to 'cheer up', or 'think happy thoughts', or 'stop being selfish', etc. There has been not one person close to me whom I could tell my thoughts of wishing for death. When I saw this movie I wanted to cry. I wanted to cry because I truly felt the pain of the character Jessie. I wanted to leave this world as much as she did, there are days that I still want to leave! Medication and therapy helps to keep those days farther and farther apart, but they are still there. Watching this movie did help me to realize that I was not alone, and it also helped me to see that there has to be, and there should be other alternatives. I wish that I could own this movie, to watch again and again and dissect it and research it. But, I am at least glad I got to see it once, and I am so thankful for www.IMDb.com for having it on record, as I have not been able to find it ANYWHERE ELSE!!!!

That is just one of the thought provoking lines from this movie. There are many. And while most of the reviewers praise the acting in this movie, and rightly so since it is a tour de force, I have to give praise to Marsha Norman who adapted her own Pulitzer Prize winning stage play for the screen.

When a movie is a "slice of life" such as this one, I unconsciously look for good and realistic dialog. There are just so many lines in this movie that ring true to real life conversations. There's a part where the Mom (Bancroft) tells Jessie (Spacek) to call her ex-husband up & try again, he might be ready and Jessie tells her that there's no point in calling him up because what's she gonna say, "nothing's changed, I'd just like to look at you if you don't mind?" In another scene Jessie compares life to a bus ride. She says it's hot, crowded & noisy and the only reason you don't get off is that your destination is 10 stops away. She says if she gets off now, or later, it's the same place when she steps down to it. In another part of the movie she says that she thought about sticking around if there was just something that she really liked, like rice pudding or cornflakes- but Jessie is a person robbed of any enthusiasm for life. So for her, staying around, especially for others, just doesn't make sense any more- she's had enough.

I really don't think Marsha was asking us to agree w/that point of view or to even condone it. I think she was just giving us some perspective- another point of view. And I have to admit, after having seen this many times, maybe Jessie made the right decision. As she also says in the movie, she is what *became* of her (Bancroft's) child. That she, Jessie, that might have made a difference to herself, didn't show up. Which is really food for thought for ANYone watching this movie- make a difference to yourself first and foremost. Despite the movie being about suicide, this is actually a life affirming movie if you look at it from that point of view.

The "acting" (I say that in parenthesis because it's so real it doesn't even seem like acting) from Spacek and Bancroft is absolutely first rate. I would recommend this movie on that score alone. Luckily, with the powerful and thought-provoking screenplay and the lovely music by Dave Grusin, there is much to recommend this heart wrenching tale of life and death.

Marsha Norman's play was gripping and harrowing on Broadway and while Director Moore opens it up as much as possible without losing the repartee, it is still a filmed stage play -- but one that packs every bit of the emotional wallop it did on the stage. The acting is marvelous and pulls no punches. Bancroft is almost unrecognizable, in a good way, completely immersing herself in the energetic mother character. Spacek is completely believable as the determined daughter. This is a true clinic in two-person character study acting.