2. 'night Mother (1986)
Way before it was released on DVD, I had to fork out a small fortune to get my paws on the VHS version of this film. The movie stars two female acting powerhouses - Anne Bancroft as the mother Thelma and Sissy Spacek as the daughter Jessie. Basically, the plot concerns itself with a suicidal Jessie trying to get her mother to see why she wants kills herself before she kills herself, and Thelma's stunned reaction to this bombshell. She begs, pleads, cajoles her daughter but Jessie is hellbent on suicide and even the powerful maternal love for a child and deep need to protect them from harm, is useless in the face of Jessie's utter determination to die. It is a heavy film - adapted from Marsha Norman's Pulitzer winning play - the acting is phenomenal and we are asked to view two sides of a story- the daughter who is just fed up with life, and the mother who is trying to help her daughter, understand her and prevent the unmentionable. Although there is no point in these futile gestures. Jessie is utterly determined to die and puts all of her mother's arguments on their head. The director never posits suicide as good or bad - the right or the wrong choice to make. It's just out there as one woman's response to what she perceives as a crappy life.