RANGE OF MOTION
US, 2000, 100 minutes, Colour.
Rebecca De Mornay, Henry Czerny, Barclay Hope, Charlotte Arnold, Melanie Mayron, Kim Roberts.
Directed by Donald Wrye.
Range of Motion is an inspirational film. It focuses on a wife and mother, played with intensity by Rebecca De Mornay, whose husband (Barclay Hope) has an accident one morning during jogging and is in coma. The wife’s response is to be concerned, anguished, get him into care, visit him every day, protect her daughters from seeing their father until the daughters react, want to see him because they feel that he is dead.
Henry Czerny plays a man whose wife is in a similar state. Kim Roberts is the African American aide who seems offhand but helps as the man continues in coma over a year. Melanie Mayron is good as the best friend from next door whose husband is having an affair.
The film offers the arguments for the turning off of life support machines. It also shows the obsessiveness of the wife and her being so committed to her husband that she neglects her children. However, the film has a happy ending as the husband recovers consciousness after a year.
The film was directed by Donald Wrye, a director in television since 1966. His only film for cinemas was the skating film, Ice Castles.
1.A moving telemovie? Illness? Hope? Care?
2.The title, its reference to caring for a person in coma, keeping the limbs exercised? The importance of Lainey and her caring for Jay?
3.The setting, the ordinary American town, American home? Parents, two daughters? Next-door neighbour? The ordinariness of the situation? The tragedy with Jay falling and injuring himself? The consequences?
4.Audience empathy for the situation? For Jay in coma? For Lainey and her desperation? Wanting the best care? Her emotional reactions? Over-reacting? The two daughters and Lainey keeping them from seeing their father? Eventually seeing their father? Ordinary means for sustaining life, insurance issues, the institute and its care? Seemingly offhand? The staff and their experience?
5.Rebecca De Mornay as Lainey? Her character, love for her husband, her children? Running the house? Urging Jay to go for a run? Her blaming herself for the accident? Her reaction, desperation, emotion? In the hospital? Her transferring her husband because of insurance problems? Her reaction to the care, to the personnel? Her meeting Ted, the comparison of the cases? The friendship – and her reaction to the kiss in the car? Their formal meetings later? Going to his wife’s funeral? Her reaction to her children, not wanting them to see their father in coma? The children’s reaction, her decision to take them? The different reactions of the daughters? Her reliance on Alice? The good friend from next door, Alice’s care for her, looking after the children, good advice? Going out on the town for a night? Lainey and her relationship with Gloria, Gloria seeming offhanded, her care, her getting used to the visits?
6.Ted, his wife in coma, the effect on him, his visiting his wife, friendship with Lainey, the kiss, his reserve, his seeing someone, the temptation to turn off the life support, his wife’s death, the funeral, farewell to Lainey?
7.The two children, their age, Sarah and her sullenness, her reaction to her father in coma, thinking he was dead? Amy and her age, younger, less experienced, her love for her parents?
8.Alice, the kindly next-door neighbour, always helping? Her husband, the discovery that he was having an affair, her resignation to this?
9.The staff, Gloria, seemingly offhand, the nursing aide, the day-by-day care?
10.Audiences expecting Jay to come out of coma or not? The phone call, the joy? The seeming miracle? His recovering, bringing him home, at table with the children? A future?
11.The value of this kind of telemovie for the wide audience, emotional response, understanding of the situation?
