Suburban grandparents' battle with Alzheimer's inspires filmmaker's 'What They Had'
While continually revising the screenplay to her first feature film “What They Had,” former Hinsdale resident Elizabeth Chomko kept hearing the words of a college professor who advised her, “The more personal your story, the more universal its reach.”
“That's true,” Chomko confirmed during a recent interview at Chicago's Conrad Hotel. “So many people have come up to me and told me some version of this story has been their life story as well.”
“What They Had” is a sharply observed, nuanced drama about a family grappling with Alzheimer's disease. It opens today.
Hilary Swank plays Bridget, who returns to her Chicago home to help her brother (Michael Shannon) persuade their obstinate father (Robert Forster) to place his wife (Blythe Danner), a deteriorating Alzheimer's patient, in an assisted living facility.
Dad won't do it. Meanwhile, old sibling resentments bubble to the surface, and other conflicts threaten to shatter the family into shards of chaos and bitterness.
“People have told me, ‘This is my family,' or ‘My brother and I don't talk anymore because of what happened to my dad,'” Chomko said. Her personal experience proved to be universal.
Chomko based the fictional story and characters on her own grandparents living in Oak Park.
“This love story about my grandparents was such a beautiful love story,” Chomko said. “It was devastating.”
Her grandmother died earlier this year.
“What a terrible thing,” Chomko said. “I wanted it to be real and I wanted to show the impact on all of us.”
Other dramas have addressed the terrible effects of Alzheimer's. Most prominently, Julie Christie earned a best actress Oscar nomination for playing an Alzheimer's patient in Sarah Polley's 2006 film “Away From Her.”
Chomko profiles an entire family coping with the disease, and her screenplay, rewritten and revised during the past few years, pays off with a layered look at the ripple effects.
Chomko said she worries that her movie may not pack generational appeal, that perhaps the subject matter might not resonate with younger viewers, even though Taissa Farmiga plays Bridget's rebellious teenage daughter.
For several years, Chomko has worked as a playwright and theater actress who has appeared in television shows and films such as “Terriers” (2010), “Common Law” (2012) and “The Mentalist” (2014).
Her decision to write and eventually direct her first dramatic feature film stemmed from three principal inspirations.
First, Chomko spent her formative elementary and middle school years in Hinsdale with a family of “very committed” Catholics.
“We had an infrastructure of spirituality and morality,” she said, “that sense of order. That's why I write. I want to make some order, make some meaning, make some beauty out of things.”
Second, Chomko discovered philosophy while studying acting at a London conservatory school for the arts.
“I left that conservatory realizing I am not an actress,” she said. “I didn't know what I was. I thought maybe I would be a lawyer and I heard that philosophy students do very well with comprehension.
“So, I loved philosophy with all those questions about the order of the universe and spirituality. To learn what connects us has had a tremendous impact on my development as a human being and as a creative person.”
Third, and perhaps most important, Chomko spent many summers with her family in rural Wisconsin where she was not allowed to watch regular television. But she could read. And she had plenty of books.
“At a very young age, I was reading John Irving, and those worlds were so vivid and so beautiful. They taught me what good writing was, and what good characters were. It provided an evolution of one's worldview through reading. In writing this movie, I can see that influence.”
Even though she couldn't watch television, she devoured movies curated by her mother, who supplied her with female-affirming films such as “Anne of Green Gables” and “Norma Rae,” plus movies starring Julie Andrews and Shirley Temple.
“I don't think Mom had any political reason to put those in front of us,” Chomko said. “She gave us what she responded to, the things that she loved to see, female heroes.
“I think they had an influence on me that I'm not sure I would have had if I had had a regular cultural upbringing. Those movies taught me about the women I wanted to be.”