Two Weeks

SALLY FIELD plays a woman reflecting on her life while facing death.

Sally Field dying to act in ‘Two Weeks’
I’m sorry. I can actually remember perky Sally Field as the wirey teenager in the TV series “Gidget” or as “The Flying Nun.”
In “Two Weeks,” she plays the family matriarch who happens to be dying of cancer.
This is a real slice of life film, full of realistic events, people and dialog. It has so many humanistic touches, it makes for compelling viewing.
Field plays Anita Bergman, a woman with three sons and a daughter. She’s divorced and remarried.
She loves her family, especially her grandchildren. She is also dying. There is no hope.
So family members take a break from their busy lives to go home and wait for their mother to die. For some, it appears they secretly hope this will all be done in a timely manner so they can return to work.
Ben Chaplin, Thomas Cavanagh and Glenn Howerton are the brothers. Howerton plays the baby brother, who still gets bossed around, whose self-centered wife none of the other family members can stand.
Two of the brothers end up in their old twin beds. Sleeping there now, the 30-somethings look a little ridiculous.
The daughter, played by Julianne Nicholson, picks up brother Keith (Chapman) at the airport. The back of her car is filled with books she has purchased on a guides to dying, what the person goes through and how you should act.
The Field character tries to rule her family as long as possible but becomes weak and helpless.
She is relegated to lying in bed, pressing a button to feed herself morphine to curb the pain, until she is too weak to do that. Then her children take over appropriating the morphine.
There are sweet scenes, like when an old girlhood friend comes over and they have many laughs reminiscing. When the friend leaves the room, she breaks down crying.
But for the Field character, the laughs are more of a pain killer than any drug.
There are humorous touches, like the neighbors who knock on the family’s door and hand the boys tuna casseroles.
The plot is interrupted periodically by a video interview one son does with the Field character, apparently shortly after her diagnosis.
Here she is alert, funny, pensive, pretty. It’s a far cry from what we see later, as she wastes away, her skin turns white, she experiences lesions.
Boys will be boys, girls will be girls. Daughter Emily (Nicholson) sorts and cleans. She sits stoically beside her frail mother while she sleeps.
Each child takes a turn at the bedside. When it’s a brother, sitting beside mother isn’t enough. Each requires a hand-held game to pass the time.
When brother Keith arrives, his first concern is the house has no high-speed Internet. We hear him on the phone to the Internet provider telling how his dying mother’s last wish is for high-speed Internet.
This is a very human story, something everyone goes through at one time or another.
Field gets special attention for her tremendous acting ability. She has grown up in front of the camera and rarely disappoints.
Kudos to Steve Stockman, who wrote and directs this film, for his decision to take on this important project.
It’s a combination of an excellent story, great cast and especially, fine writing.

TWO WEEKS
• Directed and written by Steve Stockman
• Rated R for language, including sexual references
• Runtime: 102 minutes
• 3 1/2 stars out of 4