It's not meaningless that in the terrific new comedy The Family Stone, Rachel McAdams, a single thread in a very large tapestry here, finds herself watching Judy Garland, who is herself staring from a window and mourning the passing of her family and its traditions and its days in St. Louis.
McAdams' life, like Garland's, is about to change; this time next year, probably neither will be in the house where she has spent every Christmas of her life. McAdams doesn't know this yet, and neither do we - it's just in the air.
A lovely, yearning melancholy hangs over the second half of The Family Stone, so it's only natural the picture would give a nod to that other fantastic holiday film about a big family going through upheaval, Meet Me in St. Louis. Specifically, McAdams (the beauty from Wedding Crashers and The Notebook), as high-strung Amy Stone, can't pull herself away from the scene where Garland sings "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," with its sad promise that "from now on all our troubles will be miles away," that next year we'll be together "if the fates allow," so it's important you "have yourselves a merry little Christmas now."
It hits the way a line in a book, or note in a song, can sneak up and knock the wind out of you.
By this point in 2005, I figure I've seen a few hundred pictures this year alone, and better ones than this, but few have lingered in my head the way The Family Stone has - which, I suppose, is one definition of a great film, but a film that gets at brutal truths without leaving you feeling beaten and bitter.
It goes to the core of what family is; and definitely, how families behave during the holidays, the one time of the year we mean to put aside differences but tend to notice them even more. I mentioned it's a comedy, and it is, sometimes slapstick even, but the laughs are at everyone's expense, and never glib. For instance, we don't like Amy very much, not for a while.
We like her father (Craig T. Nelson), an easygoing college professor, but the more time we spend with him, the more we witness his blind spots. That's when we reconsider whether we like him. The picture does this with each character, sometimes in subtle ways, sometimes with the subtlety of a bullhorn.
Which is why the movie feels sentimental but never cheesy: Our allegiances shift throughout, until we decide everyone deserves our sympathy, everyone has reasons, and everyone is certifiably insane - giving The Family Stone reverberations of Meet Me in St. Louis, as well as those Depression-era comedies about lovable eccentric families. Frank Capra and George Kaufman's You Can't Take It With You comes to mind.
For writer-director Thomas Bezucha's first big picture - arriving here after a pale indie career - he's taken a treacherous route, one that only appears as middle of the road as holiday comedies go. The family Stone in The Family Stone, for instance, is not a family at all, and not a broadly drawn bunch of characters from the Focker family from Meet the Parents. It is a cult, and like all tightly knit families, its members fall into one of two categories: welcomers, who absorb friends and relations without worrying about blood, and cults, which only appear friendly while being deeply suspicious of everyone.
The thing about the Stones, however, is they see themselves as the first kind, a unit that goes with the flow. All of the characters see themselves as people other than who they are. Only rare people, after all, see themselves as they are (which is why we have families).
The Stones are practically a Red State stereotype of a Blue State family: They live in Massachusetts, they are upper-middle class, and the matriarch, played by Diane Keaton, drives a Volvo and carries her organic vegetables in an NPR tote bag. Their youngest son (Ty Giordano) is not only deaf but gay and dating a black man (Brian White), whom everyone loves. And the home itself is a big, cozy New England postcard of a place, lovingly cluttered with newspapers and books and plates in the refrigerator, and so evocative, you can feel the drafts coming through the 19th-century doorframes.
One of those chills is called Meredith, and she is played very much against type by Sarah Jessica Parker, in her first film role since Sex and the City. Meredith is very brittle, practically a house of cards tiptoeing in $800 heels.
The first thing she can think to do when she steps in the Stone family home is fix herself and smooth her clothing. The Stones are wearing old clothes and pilled sweaters and dirty sweatpants. We think the movie will be told from Meredith's point of view, because she is Sarah Jessica Parker, and because she is the reason many scenes happen the way they do, but again - we're not sure we like Meredith enough. But we feel for her.
Her fiance is Everett (Dermot Mulroney, whose real-life wife, Catherine Keener, would have made the perfect Meredith). Everett is buttoned-down but the moment he walks through the door with Meredith, her controlling Manhattan careerist mode burns off him and he reverts to the kind of flowing, bouncing conversations you have with people you've known all your life.
The remaining siblings are Amy (McAdams), self-righteous and suspicious of Meredith; and Luke Wilson as stoner Ben - often a lightweight presence in lightweight films, Wilson gives the performance of his career, and gives Ben a casual intelligence his own family doesn't even notice.
Ben is the Stone who sees his family the way outsiders see his family. His heart instantly goes out to Meredith, who is so nervous around the Stones her nervousness makes her even more nervous. Meredith, however, has her own Ben: She's called Julie, her sister, played by Claire Danes, and Julie sees Meredith the way Meredith truly is, and that is not to say she sees her as warm, nurturing, or even right for the guy she'll probably marry. Of course, the Stones love Julie.
I'm making this sound like a soap opera, but it plays more like a delicate poker tournament. Bezucha underwrites characters, overplays his hand a few times - does the youngest son have to be deaf, gay, and part of an interracial relationship? Well, no, but it makes for fabulously awkward dinner conversation as Meredith tries to show her pragmatic side without showing her disapproving side, and it reveals something about her, too. And it reveals something about the film: The Family Stone is that rare film that doesn't worry about whether you go away loving every character you are meant to, and hating the others. It only wants you to know everyone is misunderstood by someone, and hopes you understand.
Contact Christopher Borrelli at: cborrelli@theblade.com
or 419-724-6117.
First Published December 16, 2005, 10:47 a.m.
