Issue date: 6/30/09 Section: Features

Suffering from leukemia, Kate depends on her sister Anna to give one of her kidneys to save her life. [Click to enlarge]

It's been the same with movies and books for as long as Hollywood has tried to recreate the diction we love into visuals we love: the movie is never as good as the book. Nor does the movie ever quite follow the book, and more often than not the overall feeling, idea and ending of the book is dramatically changed.

"My Sister's Keeper," based on the novel by Jodi Picoult, is no different. Major parts of the novel are left out and the ending is changed. Yet, for the first time in my movie-going experience, I left the College Station theater feeling the same way I did when I turned the last page of that book: finding hope in desperation.

From its title alone, you might blow this film off as a regular chick flick, but you'd be wrong.

True, tears fall from nearly every female's face, but it isn't due to the hopelessly romantic way the movie ends, because it doesn't. Instead, the film, and the book alike, both emphasize the human right of freedom of choice and with that, the inevitable consequences that those choices bring.

Kate, played by Sofia Vassilieva, was diagnosed with leukemia at an early age. Doctors tell her mother Sarah (Cameron Diaz) that Kate's life expectancy is short and that even with chemotherapy, there isn't much hope. Sarah quits her job as a lawyer, after all having a sick child is a full time job they say, and searches for any possible cure for her daughter. And she finds it: create a sibling with perfect matches who could donate everything Kate will need. So along comes Anna (Abigail Breslin), the test-tube sibling, a literal spare-parts factory.

At first, Anna's required donations to Kate are simple enough: some umbilical cord here, some bone marrow there. But by age 11, Anna has been told that she will have to sacrifice one of her kidneys in exchange for Kate's life. Anna refuses and decides to sue.

The official terms of the case states Anna as suing her parents for medical emancipation and the right to decide how her body is used. The only problem is that if Kate doesn't get the kidney, she dies.

Continued...

Page 1 of 2 next >

Article Tools