journal features

movie review - Nurse Betty

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Vancouver, 2001.07.20

This movie surprised me; it was better than I expected by a fair margin. It's about a small-town waitress (Zellwegger as Betty) who witnesses her husband's brutal murder and loses her grip on reality. Unhappily, there's an alternate reality waiting in her favourite soap.

Believing that she's destined for a wonderful life with a fictional character, our girl Betty takes a car borrowed from her husband's used car lot and heads for L.A. Meanwhile, her disappearance as an eye-witness to the murder is publised by a local reporter (played with usual manic zest by Crispin Glover), which alerts her husband's killers to her existence. They take up the chase, and everything goes to hell.

It's well-written, contains a couple of surprises, and - unlike many Hollywood flicks - is true in its portrayal of Betty's break with reality. She 'comes to' towards the end, as a real person would (sooner or later), just in time to add one last flip.

Recommended.

rand()m quote

One day you will take a fork in the road, and you're going to have to make a decision about which direction you want to go. If you go one way, you can be somebody. You will have to make compromises and you will have to turn your back on your friends. But you will be a member of the club and you will get promoted and get good assignments. Or you can go the other way and you can do something [...] for yourself. If you decide to do something, you may not get promoted and get good assignments and you certainly will not be a favorite of your superiors. But you won't have to compromise yourself. To be somebody or to do something. In life there is often a roll call. That's when you have to make a decision. To be or to do.

—John Boyd, US Air Force