With Megan home this summer, the TV is on more frequently than usual. She’s a true movie buff, this one, who attended an acting school during her high school years and perhaps still entertains this dream of doing movies. At any rate, one of the movies she recorded today was The Kids Are All Right, starring Annette Bening, Julianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo.
The premise? Two kids of a gay couple, a boy and a girl conceived by artificial insemination, bring their sperm donor birth father into their family life. Okay, the tag line suggests the movie could be a real joke. But I remembered seeing the trailer and laughing, so we gave it a whirl.
Given the recent turn of events in New York state, where gay couples are now allowed to legally wed and receive the same benefits as heterosexual married couples, this movie couldn’t be more timely. And Bening and Moore are such terrific actresses that you feel as though you are inside these people’s lives, living their angst, uncertainties, doubts. The kids, played by Mia Wasikowska, (Alice in Wonderland) and Joshua Ryan Hutcherson, a pair of Libras born two days and a couple of years apart, are perfectly cast.
So imagine it: you’re a teenager with two moms and you and your brother are actually half-siblings because you share the same sperm donor. High school is weird enough without having this added complication, right? One of your moms is a physician (Bening, a control freak) and the other one is still trying to figure out what she’s going to be when she grows up. Julianne Moore studied architecture, but didn’t finish her degree, and is now starting a landscape business. When they meet the sperm Ruffalo (Shutter Island, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) all bets are off.
The movie was nominated for four Oscars and won two Golden Globes. When you watch, you understand why. The raw emotional impact in this movie is shocking. At some point, you forget you’re watching a movie. When Bening discovers that Moore has been sleeping with Ruffalo, her pain is your pain, the anguish of anyone – male or female – who feels betrayed in a relationship. Her face squishes up in a way that communicates a soul torn open, shredded, beyond salvation. When Moore apologizes to her family, she does so by muting the TV and announcing she has something to say. Bening is sitting between their son and daughter and her face crumples like crepe paper as Moore makes her apology.
There are synchronous moments in this movie, but not in the way you expect. A clump of hair in a drain addresses the intimacies of living with a partner and is the dead giveaway for Bening’s discovery that Moore is sleeping with Ruffalo.
The teenagers are perfectly cast and communicate what it’s like to be a kid raised by two mothers. One of Megan’s male friends from college had two moms as he was growing up. It sure didn’t hurt his SAT scores, his IQ scores, or anything else about his intelligence or his ambitions. But as we watched the movie, we kept talking about Ross, whom we consider our surrogate son, the kid who is always welcome here, for as long as he wants to stay. When Megan did her month-long internship at Dolphins Plus, she stayed with Ross’s mom. What does Ross think of the movie? We don’t know yet.
The traditional family of Leave It to Beaver and Father Knows Best and the Donna Reed Show are dead. That was the 1950s, when fewer than 50% of women worked, when the Cold War raged, Russia was our arch enemy, and China was some backward Communist country.
The Kids Are All Right is the new norm. Even the blah title tells you that. The world and its paradigms are in flux, the family is redefining itself, and the fact that New York has recognized same sex marriage is a game changer. And yet, you still have the Repugs up there in front of the cameras, raging about how gay marriage will undermine the American family.
Eventually, these Repugs will die off, their silly arguments will vanish in the dark corridors of other silly arguments, and Megan’s generation will assume the helm. And her generation does not recognize differences in skin color, sexual orientation, religious biases or anything else. They are the true egalitarians. Live and let live, that’s their motto. They not only believe it, they actually live it.
I’ve put this movie on my list. Thanks. 😀
As to the Repugs… is there a definition for an American Family? I’ve lived in the midwest, northeast, and now the northwest. As best as I can tell, families come in all shapes (and sizes) and are as individual as individuals. What fascinates me is the family dynamics. When love, respect, opportunity and support are present, that’s a family. When bullies, rules and requirements are part of the picture, that’s a dysfunction.
The archetype of family – like, Leave It to Beaver – that’s what has changed. Love your definition, terri, about family versus dysfunction. You’ll enjoy the movie!
Sounds like a goodun for sure. I rarely sit still for a movie, but I love the actors in this one. 🙂
I didn’t see this but will definitely be putting it in my movie queue. Thanks for suggesting it. Have a good holiday.
I found that I can call up your page easily on my iPad but then I don’t have what I consider to be a good keyboard. I loved this movie and took my sister to see it. She thought it was okay; I thought it was brilliant. I’ve read everything leGuin has written, some more thanks once. The Left Hand Of Darkness was one.
Trash, I treasure your comments on my blogs. Just wanted you to know.
No question, Leguin is brilliant. Love reading about your hikes into the wilderness!
The thing about love is that it is blind to social conventions. The real nature of love is to dissolve the importance of difference.
Even in the lore of the “soulmate”, one has to overcome some type of challenge to recognize love. In the soulmate lore, the challenge is an age difference, a religious difference, a language barrier, a racial difference, etc.
My husband and I have known each other 24 years, been married almost 20. He’s black, I’m white. Our daughters were brought up in an interracial, multicultural household. Desiree is 26. Her friends are a colorful mixture of everything. She and her friends don’t see each other as a “skin color” or “sexual orientation”. They don’t see culture and religious ideology as barriers.
I am hoping her generation takes charge of the American political scene before the current panicky bunch of right-wing, confused, narrow-minded, self centered, corporate puppets do any more damage. It’s been painful to witness and live through the current racial & class-oriented backlash.
Lauren, thanks for the reminder of Le Guin’s writings.
Nicely said! This part: “current panicky bunch of right-wing, confused, narrow-minded, self centered, corporate puppets do any more damage” describes the bunch perfectly.
all these trumped up “differences” – and labels – when we’re all the SAME – we’re all the human race – never understood that whole other world of it all – never will – but i, too, lived through the 50s-60s and have seen changes – some – but changes nevertheless – now, for megan’s generation to assume the helm!
Trumped up: that pretty much describes it.
The rules are certainly changing – most for the good. In the UK gay couples can have a civil partnership ceremony which gives equal rights to ‘traditional’ marriage. But less and less male / female relationships seem to bother with the legalites and simply live together. Interesting to see how this will play out long term.
I believe your last statement is true, and rejoice at it. I’m old enough to remember when “mixed marriage” was something no one talked about, and the day Martin Luthor King was shot, as well as the sad day Harvey Milk was killed in San Francisco. Now our president is the child of a “mixed marriage”, and Harvey Milk has been honored with a movie. Sometimes it’s easy to forget how far we’ve come!
My favorite author, Ursula Leguin, has a story in her collection “A Fisherman Of The Inland Sea”, in which she envisions a planet where bi-sexuality is considered the norm, and the idea of monogamy is unheard of. People marry, and raise children, in complicated marriages that include 4 people. Since Leguin is the daughter of a great anthopologist, she does a fabulous job of imagining how such a culture might work, and what it’s unique problems might be. In another collection, “The Birthday of the World”, she also imagines a culture, once devestated by over population and now consisting of a small population, in which the women and men have strictly segregated societies, and individual isolation is highly valued . Reading Leguin can be a real paradigm shifter.
Thanks!
I remember bathrooms here in Florida, on the turnpike, clearly marked: for whites, for blacks. We have come far…and still have farther to go! I can see I’ll have to go back and re-read Leguin. She’s really a visionary.
thanks for mentioning leguin, lauren – a must read for sure! brava for her!