My Sister's Keeper

I wrote this article a year or so ago when I first saw the movie My Sister's Keeper. I had read the book before that, cried for an entire day and was shaken for much longer (if not a month then at least a fortnight). I finally had the guts to sit down and watch the movie, and that's when I just couldn't hold it back. You see, every time I get effected physically, mentally, emotionally or psychologically, the only thing I can think of doing is picking up a pen and writing down what ever comes to my mind. And so, I decided to write a movie review on this story. The only reason I opted for the movie over the book was that the book is so much more complicated and has so many folds to it that I wasn't sure I'd be able to do it justice at that particular point of time. I've blogged about my sister, Gayatri, before and it was because of her that the movie/ book struck me so strongly.

I don’t know how many of you have a sibling, the age doesn’t matter, but I know I have a younger sister. And I know the kind of bond that we share is truly special, and if anyone, anyone at all, tried so much as to even touch that, they would be real sorry. Yet in this movie, I see an 11 year old girl who actually tries killing her own sister; a sister who she knows is sick and needs her help, a sister who she knows will always love her even if she doesn’t help, a sister who she needs to protect...from cancer.

And that is just where things start getting messed up. Anna is an 11 year old girl who has never seen a ‘normal day’, not even as an infant. As it happens, she was conceived to be a genetic match for her older sister, Kate, who suffers from acute leukaemia, a form of cancer that affects the blood and bone marrow of one’s body. Kate’s parents, Sara and Brian, and her younger brother, Jesse, weren’t genetic matches for her, and so, her parents decided to try save their first child by means of ‘creating’ a genetic match. Thus, since the day Anna was born, her body has been used to save her dying sister. It started off with Anna’s umbilical cord, and though that saved her elder sister temporarily, the illness never really got completely cured, and Kate has been in and out of the hospital for the past few years.

Anna is ignored by her parents quite completely. They don’t ask her whether she’s comfortable going into surgery frequently, they take it for granted. A time comes when she has to give away one of her kidneys, and doing this means that she can never play soccer, do cheerleading or become a mother; and yet again, her permission is not sought but assumed. That is, till she starts asking for her rights. All she wants is the right over her own body; to be able to say whether or not she wants to donate her body, and its organs, to her sister. And to do this, Anna fights in the court with the help of a lawyer she hired. As it turns out, her lawyer, Campbell, agrees to fight this case because he suffers from epilepsy and often loses control of his own body, hence relating to Anna.

The movie shifts perspective from person to person, never really focusing on any one person. So, just when you start believing that Anna is being selfish for not even trying to help her sister, you are taken through Anna’s life, rather than Kate’s, and you see that she has never been able to live life to the fullest. Even though she is younger to Kate, Anna has to live like the older sister, never quite having the care free life younger sisters can enjoy. And just when you start believing that their mom, Sara, is the monster mom for having slapped Anna for demanding this basic right and fighting the law-suite against her child herself (being an ex-lawyer), you are taken to Kate’s life and you see the kind of things Sara has done; she sacrificed her whole life just who help her daughter, giving up the successful career that made her who she really was; she went bald just so Kate wouldn’t feel embarrassed of stepping out hairless due to her chemotherapy.

And in the middle of all this chaos lies Jesse, the brother that never really was a part of the family. His parents didn’t even know about his life or school, till they are suddenly told that he suffers from dyslexia. And to cope with that he is sent off to boarding school.

What really makes the entire thing feel so up close is that all this is strung through Kate’s diary, a book that shows each of her family members individually. The diary is a source through which we, as the audience, get to know that Kate feels responsible for ruining her family and their lives completely. This movie is a true tearjerker, really bringing out the true meaning of family, that of sister hood and mother hood.

To view the original post, go to:

http://blog.buzzintown.com/2010/06/why-my-sisters-keeper-is-special/