1Reviews and everything / Stepmom review

Stepmom

★★★★

Director: Chris Columbus

Starring: Susan Sarandon, Julia Roberts, Ed Harris, Jena Malone

Running time: 2:05

Year: 1998

Country: USA

Emotional, conservative and tranquil, Stepmom offers a recipe for a happy family life. Against the backdrop of the orthodox American setting Chris Columbus directs a bitter-sweet, called weepy by some, story of a marriage failure and children with multiple parents. At the heart of the lotus of family values like giving a helping hand, forgiveness, acceptance and trust wrapped with a bright red ribbon of simple, yet important happenings like family holidays, school life, wedding, life and death is the fundamental solution to all problems – love. Everyone has to make their own choices between career and family, between things and people, between hatred and acceptance.

At the beginning of the movie we meet a recently divorced weekend-father lawyer Lukas Harrison (Ed Harris) who lives with his new girlfriend – a creative and career-oriented Isabel Kelly (Julia Roberts). The two children 12-year-old Anna (Jena Malone) and 7-year-old Ben (Liam Aiken) live with their dad and the former does a very good job of giving his girlfriend a hard time. Her brother follows her lead. Their mother Jackie (Susan Sarandon) is not happy with the woman either and uses every opportunity to show her what lousy kind of stepmom she is trying to be. Lukas and Isabel want to get married and Isabel will gladly show Lukas that she is really kind to children if only they let her. For the kids, for Anna especially, the divorce is hard because it disintegrates the family and hurts her feelings since nobody had asked her opinion. She also feels the love of her mom and Anna’s loyalty does not let her be nice to the mean and rich woman who ‘cares only about herself’.

Jackie is worried that she is away from her children and that nobody can take care of her kids as lovingly as she did. One can admire the courage with which she faces not only this problem but also the news that she has cancer. Although we hardly see Jackie weeping, it is the audience that can shed tears. We can hear bitterness in her voice because she does not understand why she has to go through all this – she has been doing everything ‘right’, loving her children and putting all of her into them.

The movie describes the everyday life of an American family life, with its joys and problems. Holidays spotlight the importance of doing something together, giving and sharing within a family, consequently, in the life of all Americans. They also bring the vision of peace and security, a sense of stability and certainty in this hectic world. The mother and the children go trick-or-treating together, they spend Christmas together and celebrate it in a very warm way. The movie seems more idealistic, describing things the way they should be instead of how they really are because, as John Steinbeck writes, holidays usually reveal people’s worst characteristics. Anna has problems at school and Isabel does her best to help her. Isabel and Jackie seem very emotional when talking about Anna’s marriage and thus emphasizing the role of a family in creating a balanced life.

The problem of choice that everyone has to make in the family is a complicated one. It all begins with a choice –the divorce and ends with one. Isabel is in two minds about her career and the person she loves and, consequently, his children because they are important for him. What to choose – the happiness with her beloved or success? Kids have to make up their mind whether to accept the stepmom or not and so does her mother.

The filmmakers make it so that you care about the characters’ dilemmas and sympathize – or sometimes bear – with them. Ultimately, this movie is about an attempt of a family life where people are honest with one another and, most importantly, with themselves. They trust one another and their good judgement, they are guided by love. It is quite an alternative version to families where everyone is unhappy and pretends to be living their lives instead of actually living them, without quarrels and hatred, thus providing us with food for thought and a model of how actually we should behave. Perhaps, if everybody did like this, the world would be a much better place.

The actors are marvellous. Julia Roberts is doing really nicely, Sarandon is playing formidably and the children are not acting at all – they are just being real kids on the screen.

Alex Kvartalny @ flamedragon27.blogspot.com

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