“What They Had” Hits Home

Release Date：Oct/19/2018
Genre：Drama
Director：Elizabeth Chomko
Cast：Hilary Swank、Michael Shannon、Robert Forster、Taissa Farmiga、Blythe Danner

Viola's Rating：7.4



As the world is turning into an aging society, long-term care is getting more and more important. It’s something that if we don’t go through it ourselves, we’ll never know how difficult and harsh it is. Elizabeth Chomko, a young director from Chicago, also faces this issue in her family, and she brought the story to her very first feature film “What They Had”, which was released limited on Oct. 19, 2018.

Based on Director Chomko’s own experience with her grandparents, the plot of “What They Had” is mainly about the leading actress Bridget (Hilary Swank) returns home after her brother, Nick (Michael Shannon), urges to deal with their ailing mother who has Alzheimer’s and their father's reluctance letting go of their life together.

Since “What They Had” is about Alzheimer’s, Bridget and Nick’s mother’s condition deteriorates more and more as the plot develops, and the film aptly depicts how a family communicates with each other and handles all the confrontation and dilemma in between. Whether to send someone they love to nursing home or not is a true struggle in modern society, but keeping delaying is another way of pressurizing the other family members. This attribute is described completely in the flick.

Maybe the theme of “What They Had” seems familiar, but it’s different from all the other motion pictures of this kind you’ve even seen. Not only because it’s based on the director’s true story, but also because it casts Oscar winning actress Hilary Swank and Oscar nominated actors Michael Shannon and Robert Forster. Their acting skills convey the plot smoothly without turning it into a cliché. Audience finds many humanizing details in unexpected moments that gives the feeling of different Alzheimer’s story, and moviegoers truly believe that Shannon and Swank are siblings dealing with the situation together hand in hand while watching “What They Had”.

Despite its from-time-to-time humor due to the mother’s adorable symptoms and forgetting things, “What They Had” is still a depressing movie in general. Just as watching “Manchester By the Sea”, the continuous string music surrounds the audience’s ear, providing a heartbreaking ambiance, which creates a contrast to the Christmas setting in the picture.

There are different ways of caring for others and expressing love in “What They Had”, and although family members might hurt each other and distant one another, deeply in everyone’s heart, there’s a way to recover that crack by picking up “what they had” together as a family. No matter what difficulties family members face, beautiful memories will connect them once again.

Many have said that long-term care is the long goodbye, which is true, but at least we can grab what’s happy while it’s not too late, and “What They Had” definitely hits home with its viewers to relate to their own family experiences.

Picture Credit: IMDb