Jodi Picoult's My Sister's Keeper invoked ethical concerns about genetic and medical advances, and how they affect us on a personal level. Anna, a 13-year old who was engineered and born to be a perfect genetic match for her frail sister, Kate, decides to seek an attorney to become medically emancipated from her parents, who have subjected her to various medical procedures since birth. Of course, this sends shock waves through the family, especially her mother who is extremely devoted to Kate and to keeping her alive at all costs. The story draws questions about quality of life, living in the moment and undying devotion to those we love. It's clear that there is a lot of passion and loyalty within this family, but that it also causes a lot of heartache and fear.
On the most simple level, the transition of characters from the written page to the screen was awkward and compromising of some of the most endearing aspects of the story. Perhaps the biggest letdown in this regard was the depiction of attorney Campbell Alexander by Alec Baldwin. This can be best summed up by Jon Stewart's comment when interviewing Cameron Diaz about the movie on The Daily Show. "That's the saddest episode of 30 Rock I've ever seen!". In the novel, Campbell's character was best defined by his vulnerabilities, which allowed him to develop a relationship with Anna and with the plot line. Unfortunately, Alec Baldwin was not able to display these vulnerabilities and it seemed to cheapen the role and the storyline. It gave us little sympathy for someone who was such a complex character in the novel.
Other character portrayals ranged from good to alright. Sofia Vassilieva's performance as Kate, the ill sister, was probably the most endearing. Cameron Diaz (Sara, the Mom) and Abigail Breslin (Anna) brought emotion and power behind their roles, that sufficed for the storyline. It brought many people to tears. The absence of another great supporting character in the book, Julia Romano, Anna's Guardian Ad Litem, created another loss of intimacy with Anna that would have brought the tragedy home even more. The judge for the case, played by Joan Cusak, seemed to fill some of this absence in a scene set in her chambers.
Sadly, there was an apparent overhaul of much of the storyline and resulting moral ambiguities presented in the book. Picoult is known for creating stories with complex moral stances and tends to leave many things unanswered. In fact, that what's best about her novels. They leave you asking more questions and considering perspectives you may not have considered before. Usually the novel is heart wrenching as we see the effects of actions and emotions through a range of characters reacting from their own point of view. This is very true to life. It's easy to observe a story externally and place our moral judgement on the people involved, but that doesn't hold up when we are involved ourselves. When the ego is involved, when our own behavioral conditioning comes into play, we don't often exhibit the highest of moral standards. Or simply, our moral code may be altered by our personal experience.
The film version of My Sister's Keeper painted a picture of an otherwise happy family, who were suddenly taken aback by the action of the youngest member laying this bombshell on them. In the book, however, while it was clear they all loved each other, the family was internally collapsing even before this whole situation played out. For example, Jesse, Anna's neglected older brother was very troubled in the book, even starting a fire to seemingly get his firefighting father's attention for once.
The biggest upset, however, had to be the ending of the movie. Apparently, the makers of the film felt the need to move away from Picoult's moral ambiguities and spell out clearly what they thought the main point of the storyline should be. In doing so, they completely changed the ending of the movie and ruined some of the best aspects and ethical questions to come up from the book's ending. The ending in the book leaves us feeling uncomfortable and fills us with regret for all of the characters in the book. The film's ending, however, wraps things up in a clean conclusion with a clear judgement of appropriate actions for the characters to make in order for a (somewhat) happy ending.
Out of recognition that fitting novels into a 2 hour or less movie requires omission of some of our favorites parts of the stories and that keeping the main idea of the plot, rather than details, is often necessary to make it a cohesive story, it is difficult to translate great storytelling into film. But, we have seen it done, so it is not impossible. The best way to devalue the integrity of a story is to assume that the audience needs an obvious and contrived dissertation on the issue at hand. The issue at the center of My Sister's Keeper is so relevant to our developing medical ethic, it's a shame that the film couldn't reflect the novel's consideration of a greater variety of aspects of the topic. We could have gotten so much more from it.
