My Sister's Keeper

March 6, 2010 IMDB Comment: Kramer's Child versus Kramer's Child

*** This review may contain spoilers *** This is more complex than usual for its purpose, which is basically to make you cry.

The simple construction can be seen in "Million Dollar Baby." You spend the movie being exposed to the person who is going to die. The point is to make you feel the loss in the same way your designated observer in the story does. It requires no narrative tricks, and usually they distract.

Not here. There are three devices (one of them unintended) that made this more effective.

The most obvious of course is an emotional slam near the end where you discover deeper motives in what you have just seen. This was not subtle. It was completely out of the blue, and re-interpreted much of what you had seen so far. Very clever resituating. This is a dynamic I study and here it was used effectively.

Less obvious was the shifting narrative. Usually we have no explicit narrator in these things. We just exist as observing ghosts. Sometimes, and especially in the cry-dramas, we do have a narrator. She is introduced early in a voice-over, with the purpose of letting us know she is our surrogate in the story. When she cries, we should too.

Here the filmmakers shifted that around. Every character has a voice-over. You are told in clear terms (via genre shorthand) that everyone here is your representative. So the conflicts you see worked out on the screen are conflicts you are allowed to have internally as you get deeper into the thing. It was a small trick. In fact, there are signs that it may have been added after the filming wrapped. But it works. Oh, it works.

The third device was personal. A friend recommended this. I have trouble with Ms Diaz, and have since she messed up "Malkovich." So I prepared myself by watching her in a movie with similar sister-saving-sister dynamics: "In Her Shoes." Now, I do not credit her with much talent as an actress, but carrying that prior movie into this one added dimensions to her performance beyond what she could carry herself.