Mark Reviews Movies: AS THEY MADE US

As They Made Us, Quiver Distribution

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Review by Mark Dujsik | April 7, 2022

As They Made Us, the debut feature from writer/director Mayim Bialik, is a thorny film about a dying loved one. More to the point, the story is about trying to reconcile, not so much with said person, but with one's history with and the very idea of that person.

The trick of Bialik's screenplay is how it establishes certain notions and expectations for this kind of story, only to dismiss or subvert them as this particular tale progresses toward its inevitable but still uncertain finale. It's resolute in not offering easy resolutions for the various conflicts, divides, and generally unhealthy relationships that the film establishes and observes. There's real, painful wisdom in that choice.

At the center of the story is Abigail (Dianna Agron), a divorced 30-something with two sons and an apparent hesitation to move on with her life. Part of that has to do with a sense of obligation to her aging parents Eugene (Dustin Hoffman), whose slow decrease in his mental and physical faculties has hastened recently, and Barbara (Candice Bergen), who calls Abigail for every major crisis in her life—no matter how objectively trivial it may be.

A lot of Abigail's status of being stuck, though, has to do with a long history with her parents that has made her feel that obligation in the first place. That Bialik understands and attempts to communicate that sense, through a series of flashbacks and how Abigail puts just about everything on hold—either intentionally or because that's simply what happens when one is this embedded in such co-dependent relationships—for her parents, is an important distinction from a more simplified view of such a scenario.

Eugene is dying. Barbara won't and can't accept that fact or what that entails for her life—hospice care, his continued decline, his approaching absence. Abigail has to bear the weight of it all, as she has since her older brother Nathan (Simon Helberg) more or less disowned their physically abusive father and emotionally manipulative mother (The flashbacks reveal pieces of that abuse, and if there's an obvious and distracting fault here, it's in trying to make the four actors look decades younger). Nathan is willing to Eugene (He can comprehend the "tangible" pain his father caused), but he still wants nothing to do with Barbara (His mother's more "sinister" ways still hurt).

Some of the material outside of the family dynamic—Abigail's relationship with her ex (played by Charlie Weber) and her attempt to start dating her landscaper (played by Justin Chu Cary)—doesn't quite fit, since it's shoved to the side once Abigail has to be secondary caretaker to her father and the primary emotional one for her mother, anyway. As They Made Us, though, allows Bialik and the cast dig into the troublesome and troubling ways of this family, acknowledging that, while death may be a definitive end, it by no means provides conclusive answers.

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