Movie: My Sister's Keeper

Yesterday was a significant life-event anniversary, and I decided on a movie as a treat. Unfortunately, there aren't a lot of movies in the theaters right now that really grab me. Out of curiosity when looking at the list of movies playing, I clicked on My Sister's Keeper's trailer, and it looked pretty good, so there I went.

The spoiler-free part:
If you are expecting a realistic movie, your suspension of disbelief will be stretched until it snaps like a cheap rubber band. However, if you're instead willing to pretend this is an alternate universe with much scarier codes of medical and legal ethics than our own, and just get into the emotional aspects and character interactions, it's a pretty good movie. It made me bawl like a baby, but you probably guessed that already. I'm willing to bet the original book is better. There are parts that very much seem rushed, cut off, or just not well developed -- very common in movies based on books.

Also, very good job capturing how inadequate parents operate, especially since this is a situation where people expect the parents to be hyper-competent instead of incompetent. There's one parent who has basically checked out of his responsibilities, and one who has completely defined herself in terms of one child -- thus requiring that child to fulfill her needs. And as a result none of the children are getting the care they need. Jesse has to care for himself, Kate has to care for her mother's emotional needs as well as her own, and Anna has to take care of everyone to the point where her own health is an acceptable and expected casualty. Some parts are obvious ("Give your sister your kidney, dammit! It's your duty to save her life!"), and some are more subtle. There's a scene where Anna is cleaning up one of the nastier aspects of Kate's illness, and I found myself wondering "Where are the parents? Why is this 11-year-old expected to wipe her sister's ass instead of shouting 'Mom, Kate needs some help'?"

Now, the Spoilerific part of the entry:
Some of the issues that I had with suspending my disbelief.
1) The premise. We have a preteen suing to avoid being forced to give a kidney to her sister who has gone into renal failure due to active leukemia. The whole time I was sitting there thinking "Would any reputable doctor actually take a kidney donation from a healthy preteen, even if they were willing?" If the movie hadn't largely been a lark on my part, I probably would have looked that up before going. For those with the same issue, I looked it up when I got home, and a very quick jaunt through the internet suggests the answer is "Technically yes, but..." Only a third of transplant centers will accept donations from mature but underage identical twins, fewer still from mature minor non-twins, and donations from immature minors are exceedingly rare. You throw in to this movie that the desired donor has made it clear she is NOT willing to undergo procedure, and that the recipient is suffering from leukemia that is not in remission, it would just never happen. No doctor that Sara would be wiling to let operate on Kate would take a kidney out of healthy preteen kid to put it into a kid that will almost inevitably die anyway because she's cancerous and will not be able to handle chemo or radiation with only one kidney.

2) Mom The Lawyer pleading her own case. What's the saying? A lawyer who represents herself has a fool for a client. No lawyer of even moderate ability would do this, unless possibly she thought she could bully her daughter hard enough on the stand to make her drop the case right there, in which event, great mom, huh? But then again, the movie is a long string of "Great mom, huh?" moments, sprinkled with the occasional "Great Dad, too" and "Geez, Dad, grow a pair" moments.

3) Judge De Salvo repeatedly threatening to have Campbell's service dog removed from the court. Hello, service dog. As soon as he declared it to be a service dog, she had no right to do or say anything about its presence in the room, and I really hope a judge would know that.


I am kind of imagining about 10 years after the movie.
One, I really hope that when she reached adulthood, Anna found a really good psychological counselor to work with, because the poor girl is going to need one. "Nope, your parents didn't love you or think of you as a person, you were just spare parts for your sister, it was your job since infancy to save her life and in the end you failed."

Two, I bet by the time Anna is thirty at the latest, and probably much younger, she never speaks to her mom except on the yearly family vacation and that usually ends in a screaming match. Of course, Mom doesn't understand why her daughter hates her so, because in her mind she never did anything wrong. And she probably still thinks Anna was selfish for wanting to keep her kidney, still refuses to believe that Kate's wishes were Kate's wishes, and on some level blames Anna for Kate's death. Frankly, Mom really needs a good psychologist too, but I'm sure she'll never go to one because again, in her mind she never did anything wrong.

As for Anna and Dad, they probably get along better but are still distant. He wasn't as directly into the "Parts: The Clonus Horror" bit, but he never stood up for her, either.

So, finally summary on My Sister's Keeper: Completely unrealistic, but pretty good from a psychological and emotional aspect.