In memory of the late Diane Keaton, I wanted to re-watch one
of her films. But which one? Of course I remembered her hilarious teaming with
Woody Allen in so many of his early flicks. I can still see the two of them in Sleeper (1973),
elaborately pretending to be surgeons charged with cloning an assassinated
political leader from his one remaining body part: a nose. I’m also very partial to Love and Death
(1975) and of course Keaton is justly adored for her Oscar-winning title role
in the ultimate romantic comedy, Annie Hall (1977).
In truth I fell for Keaton in her very first film: Lovers
and Other Strangers (1970). In this charming ensemble outing, set amid the chaos
of a big family wedding, she has the small role of Joan Vecchio, married to the
groom’s older brother. Her appearance causes some tension at the festive
gathering, because she and husband Richie are seriously thinking of separating.
The problem: Joan has discovered that, after several years of wedlock, Richie’s
hair no longer smells like raisins.
Of course Keaton was later to play other wedding scenes,
notably in The Godfather, where she was Michael Corleone’s naïve young
wife-to-be, meeting the family at the lavish nuptials of Michael’s sister . But
as she aged she hardly lost her on-screen sex appeal. In 2003’s Something’s Gotta
Give, a wealthy playboy (Jack Nicholson) gives up an attractive young woman
in order to woo her mother, played by Keaton, who was then almost 60. Still,
the course of true love never does run smooth. In a 1996 comedy, The First
Wives Club, Keaton (who in real life never married) is one of a trio of
reluctant divorcees determined to get revenge on the husbands who dumped them
for much younger cuties.
Though Keaton was known for her flair for comedy, she also
played highly dramatic roles. In 1977, the same year in which the world fell in
love with her Annie Hall, she starred as a secretly promiscuous schoolteacher
who meets a tragic fate in Looking for Mr. Goodbar. Four years later,
she starred with Warren Beatty in Reds, an Oscar-winning epic saga of
the Russian Revolution as seen through the eyes of real-life American activists John Reed
and Louise Bryant. But I decided to re-visit Keaton by way of a much smaller
drama. Released in 1996, it was called Marvin’s Room. And, like Reds,
it earned Keaton an Oscar nomination for Best Performance by an Actress.
If Keaton’s Louise Bryant in Reds was heroic, her
Bessie in Marvin’s Room is downright saintly. (That’s a new one for
me—Diane Keaton as a saint!) In this story of a medical crisis that brings s
fractured family together, Meryl Streep is the bitchy Lee, unhappily raising
two misfit kids by herself ever since her no-good husband walked out. (One of her
sons, a teenaged Leonardo DiCaprio, has just burned her house down.) She’s received
word that her younger sister Bessie (Keaton) has been diagnosed with cancer and
desperately needs a bone marrow donor. So Lee and the kids reluctantly drive
from Ohio to Florida to help out a relative with whom Lee has had no contact
for 20 years.
Keaton’s Bessie, who lost her first love to an accident many
years back, has spent decades of her life looking after her bed-ridden father
(Hume Cronyn) and her wacky aunt (an unrecognizable Gwen Verdon). Despite the
physical challenge she herself is facing, she has a radiant optimism about the
days ahead. In service to others, she finds joy, and we believe every word she
says.
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