The only misstep was the unncessary wrapper story, when daughter Ellen is being questioned about her cancer-raveged mother's death. The plot is pretty basic - a young woman is forced home by her father when her mother is diagnosed with cancer. But the more responsible Ellen becomes for her increasingly ailing-mother, the more she collides with her distant father, another constricted performance by William Hurt. In real life, I've known hundreds of Kates - the women who give all to their families and ask for little in return. But this family isn't an archetype - they are so well written and acted it's as if you know them all from the way the pictures are hung and the stencils on the wall were created.
Movies frequently get the details wrong.
Being a Northerner, I'm sensitive to the way Hollywood ignores this relevent component of settings. And the set design of the house is just perfect - it looks very lived in. If you want something with the same emotional realism of Saving Private Ryan without the decibel-level, go see One True Thing .