Ellen Gulden (Renee Zellweger) is an ambitious Harvard-educated New York journalist whose career seems to be on the fast track. Then her father George (William Hurt), a National Book Award-winning professor, orders her to come home and nurse her mother Kate (Meryl Streep in an Academy Award-nominated performance) who is dying of cancer. Always trying to win her aloof dad's attention and approval, Ellen moves back to their small Massachusetts town.
While she looks after the mother she's never really respected or gotten along with, Ellen stews in a vat of resentments over the unjust interruption of her career and the time away from her boyfriend (Nicky Katt). Then, slowly, she begins to see Kate with fresh eyes. Drawn into her mother's world of community activities, she finds herself admiring Kate's bravery, her cheerful optimism, and the simple faith that has animated her selfless love for others.
Ellen also realizes, for the first time, the weakness and vulnerability of her idealized father. With disillusionment comes anger, but her mother is a role model in that arena as well. Very vulnerable herself and wracked by pain, Kate now encourages her daughter to face reality with acceptance: "It's so much easier to be happy, to choose to love the things you have instead of thinking about what you are missing."
Director Carl Franklin draws out all the emotional firepower in Karen Croner's adaptation of Anna Quindlen's 1995 novel. Everyone who experiences this heart-affecting film will want to revisit the myths and meanings they have constructed around their parents. What does it really mean to "Honor your father and your mother"? Our task, as One True Thing reveals, is to cherish the souls of these people who have brought us into the world and recognize both the blessings and the burdens they have bequeathed to us.