'night, Mother (1986)

Excellent adaptation.

Don't listen to the negative reviews

An Exercise In Nonsense

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

I usually avoid movies that I know are going to be heavily sad. I know from the subject matter that this one would be. And usually if I do watch a movie that turns out to be as intense and sad as this one, I usually will never watch it again. This is not a movie that I will ever be able to watch over and over, but it is a movie that despite my normal pattern, I have now watched multiple times. The biggest draw for the movie to me is the performances by Spacek and Bancroft. They both are so good, and they turn the dialogue they are given into gold. The movie is heavily driven by the dialogue and the characters, and it all flows together so well. By the end you feel you truly know these two women, and you feel all that they feel. Overall, the script, the direction, the camera angles, and most of all the performances just all shine in this movie. I can recommend anyone watch the film at least once for the performances. Just prepared for an intense, roller coaster ride of emotions.

It takes guts to adapt a stage play to the screen without "opening it up;" most of the time such efforts either feel confining or, if opened up, the power of the original gets lost in the screenplay."'night, Mother", adapted to the screen by the original playwright Marsha Norman, is a courageous, nearly heroic effort: Norman does not allow the action to move outside the small house shared by Thelma Cates (Anne Bancroft) and her daughter Jessie (Sissy Spacek) and the result is a harrowing look at two unhappy women and the different solutions they find for their unhappiness.Jessie, a middle-aged epileptic who can neither hold down a job or even drive a car, whose husband has left her and whose son is a petty criminal, has decided on her "final solution:" suicide, with her late father's pistol.The film opens with Jessie puttering around the house and we see that she has a list of things to do before taking her leave. The camera follows Spacek around the house as she does laundry, cleans out the refrigerator and some of the kitchen cabinets, occasionally glancing at her list and crossing an item off.Enter Thelma, home from some kind of shopping trip. The dialogue between them is completely ordinary until Thelma sees Jessie cleaning her father's pistol and, after some verbal fencing, Jessie tells Thelma of her plan to be dead by morning.Thus the stage is set for a tug-of-war for Jessie's soul, with Mama on one side and Jessie herself on the other. Thelma becomes increasingly desperate as she realizes her daughter has made up her mind, and the film builds to a shattering climax.The original Broadway cast was Kathy Bates as Jessie and Anne Pitoniak as Thelma. It's a little unfortunate that they didn't bring them to the screen: Spacek and Bancroft are both excellent but they don't always seem to be related. Spacek is real while Bancroft is theatrical and they don't always appear to be on the same page dramatically. But this is a small quibble about an otherwise superb film that ultimately breaks the heart.

Tough, unyielding screen-version of Marsha Norman's play which can hold a lot of interest for select viewers, the theme of suicide being an uncomfortable one for the mass-market. Director Tom Moore doesn't try to disguise the stage origins of the material but, because of his mundane, straightforward handling, the piece doesn't grip the viewer the way live actors on the stage can. It has also been handicapped by the casting, with Anne Bancroft and Sissy Spacek portraying mother and daughter. They're marvelous actresses--and both are fine in this movie--but I never felt they were related (Kathy Bates played the daughter on stage, but was probably too old to be cast alongside Bancroft). Because she always does wonders with roles of conflicted young women, it is Spacek who comes off as the stronger of the two; she really nails the part of this hapless, yet coldly focused and determined girl who wants to kill herself. Bancroft has a tendency to overdo certain scenes; she's theatrical instead of logical. The script really needed to be reworked for the screen (and for these particular ladies) and the daughter doesn't give us much of a chance to catch up to her emotionally, and so many viewers may feel shut out of the proceedings early on. **1/2 from ****

I can guess making a film with only two major characters, and little action must be difficult to mold into a watchable movie. However, "Night Mother" seems to accomplish just that. The talents of Sissy Spacek as Jesse, a girl hell bent on killing herself because she despairs of the future. After a failed marriage, her child in trouble on the run and a future of just staying on at home, she incredibly informs her mother that she is going to shoot herself. Anne Bancroft, as her mother seems to full of love of life but oblivious of the pain that surrounds her. From then on, thru well written dialog, we are shown the lives of these two women and the final outcome. There is little action, but the tension at times can get so thick that you need a power knife to cut thru it' What I did find disturbing was that the content of the film (suicide) seemed to justify Jesse's choice. She probably could have chosen to live and try to better her life but the bleakness of her homebody existence seemed to say that there was no escape....a lonely house off a country road, her illness preventing her from possible jobs or going out,relatives and friends that barely acknowledged her etc..Because of this I found it somewhat disturbing.This film should be served as an instruction or primer of the subject of suicide. You can understand the person who wants to commit suicide and feel their despair, but it shouldn't be accepted as your only choice. The film can be possibly fodder for a play or another movie showing how suicide can shatter a family in the aftermath....maybe another film in the future from the same director, maybe?