You can't always get what you want _ or expected to have. But nevertheless, we try, and sometimes, we do get what we need. This is the idea explored in Elizabeth Chomko's debut feature, "What They Had." Chomko, an actress, wrote and directed the sensitive and naturalistic family drama about the intergenerational conflicts swirling around a parent with Alzheimer's. She's assembled a wonderfully talented cast to explore the subject, the themes of expectations and the failure of those expectations.
We're expected to go to college, to marry the right person, to have a career our parents approve of. We expect to grow old together. What happens when that doesn't happen? All these expectations come crashing down around a Chicago family one Christmas, when matriarch Ruth (Blythe Danner) goes missing during a blizzard, and her children, Bridget (Hilary Swank) and Nicky (Michael Shannon), gather with Bridget's daughter, Emma (Taissa Farmiga), at the family home to decide next steps for their mother's care. The children are at odds with their father, Bert (Robert Forster), who steadfastly refuses to move his wife into a memory care assisted living facility.
Each character is dealing with the failure of expectations, their own _ or others' expectations for them _ and that all comes to a head while the family is under one roof. Emma's floundering in college but refuses to address it with her mother, who has pinned her own deferred dreams on her daughter's success. Nicky's suffering under the weight of his father's disappointment that he's only a "bartender," despite owning his own place, and Bridget is trying to care for everyone without admitting she's lacking all the "bells and whistles" she wanted in a marriage. The interfamilial conflicts play out on the backdrop of Ruth's decline.
The themes of memory-keeping and family lore weigh heavy in Chomko's film, inspired by her own family's experience with Alzheimer's. The film opens and closes with archival photos and footage of Ruth and Bert in their glowing, 1950s youth: long-tanned legs and a seemingly boundless reserve of love and energy. The family repeats beloved stories about Ruth and Bert's courtship, and Ruth looks lovingly at her husband and children, calling him her "boyfriend," Nicky and Bridget her "babies."
In a cast of award-winners, Forster stands out for his performance as the stubborn, fiery Bert, bound and determined to hold on to his sweetheart by any means necessary. For all the denied expectations of the film, the one that stings the most is his belief that he and Ruth might grow old together. "I'm the best memory-care in Chicago," he bellows, knowing his memory of Ruth keeps her alive, at least for him. The film is most poignant when focusing on Bert mourning the hope he had to spend the rest of his life with his wife.
Oscar-winner Swank is excellent matched with Shannon, and the siblings share a sardonic gallows humor. It's nice to see actors like Swank and Shannon, so often in isolated and singular roles, mixing it up in a family dynamic. While the film falters in the last act, and never quite finds the right place to end, it's almost appropriate for a story about a family struggling to find their storybook ending anyway.
