Marvin’s Room

For his filmmaking debut, the prolific Broadway director Jerry Zaks mounted a screen adaptation of Scott McPherson’s 1990 stage play, with Diane Keaton and fellow baby-boomer grande dame Meryl Streep toplining an intergenerational ensemble cast that included Robert De Niro, Gwen Verdon, Hume Cronyn, and a young Leonardo DiCaprio. Echoing the contours of her performance a decade earlier in Crimes of the Heart, Keaton edged out Streep for a Best Actress Oscar nomination with her searching interpretation of the middle-aged, unmarried Bessie, who has dedicated herself to the care of her bedridden father, Marvin, with no involvement from estranged sister Lee (Streep). When Bessie is diagnosed with leukemia and appeals to Lee for help in identifying a suitable donor for a bone marrow transplant, Lee reluctantly makes the return trip home with her two sons (DiCaprio and Hal Scardino) in tow, setting the scene for a long-overdue family reckoning where life-or-death narrative stakes give way to an expansive, generous meditation on love, forgiveness, and what we leave behind.