WHAT THEY HAD – Review by MaryAnn Johanson

Writer-director Elizabeth Chomko’s debut film is a simultaneously sharp and tender portrait of longstanding, interconnected family squabbles and hidden resentments that finally come to a head with a near-tragedy. Bridget (Hilary Swank) rushes home to Chicago when her mother, Ruth (Blythe Danner), wanders off one snowy night: Mom’s in the late-middle stages of Alzheimer’s, sometimes coherent, more often confused and lost in the past. She turns up hours later, just fine, but this is the last straw for Bridget’s desperate brother, Nick (Michael Shannon), who’s been holding down the familial fort while their father, Bert (Robert Forster), refuses to acknowledge that it’s time for Ruth to move to a nursing home where she can get the support she needs. Bridget has power-of-attorney, but will she use it to override her father’s wishes?

Achingly affecting performances all around — particularly Danner’s, well, charming blitheness and Shannon’s seething, grieving anger — and oh-so-many poignant details ground What They Had in melancholy authenticity. Continue reading…

EDITOR’S NOTE: What They Had is AWFJ’s Movie of the Week for Nov 2, 2018