Marvin's Room (1996) on Netflix
Bessie has spent twenty years in Florida caring for their bedridden father, Marvin, while her estranged sister Lee lives in Ohio. Bessie's leukemia diagnosis brings Lee and her sons back.
- Netflix3.6/5
- IMDb6.7/1032,251 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes84%
Trailer
Plot summary
A stroke left Marvin bedridden twenty years ago, and he lives in a Florida home where his sister Ruth and his daughter Bessie care for him. His other daughter, Lee, left for Ohio two decades ago and has not contacted the family since. Lee's seventeen-year-old son Hank, angry with his mother and missing his father, sets fire to some photographs and burns down the house, then is committed to a mental institution. Bessie learns she has leukemia, the same disease that killed her mother, and needs a bone marrow transplant. She asks Lee for help. Lee thinks Hank or his younger brother Charlie could be a match, so she collects Hank from the institution and they leave for Florida.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Marvin's Room (1996)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- When Streep rejoined the production she no longer wanted to play Bessie, having recently portrayed several maternal and sympathetic characters; she chose to play Lee instead and suggested Diane Keaton for Bessie, an actress she had not worked with before and wanted to collaborate with.
- De Niro brought in Leonardo DiCaprio to play Hank, having worked with him on This Boy's Life in 1993, and although De Niro meant to stay behind the scenes to avoid appearing in films produced by his own company, Rosenthal, Rudin and Harvey Weinstein persuaded him to take a supporting role.
- The play behind the film came from Scott McPherson, who drew on caring for his partner, a cartoonist and activist, during the HIV/AIDS epidemic; he completed a screenplay adaptation before his death from complications related to HIV/AIDS in 1992, at the age of 33.
- Anjelica Huston was cast as Lee, but as the project ran into prolonged pre-production and financing difficulties she departed as well, after deciding to direct a film of her own.
- Several days of filming took place at Walt Disney World in Orlando, including the Magic Kingdom's Swiss Family Treehouse and Liberty Square, and according to The Orlando Sentinel the production kept the shoot largely unpublicized and prohibited park guests from taking photographs.
