As the quality of home video presentation has accelerated over the last few years, I’ve been particularly pleased with the sweetening of the audio tracks.  And every once in a while, I’ve been surprised and thrilled when a casting director has taken the human vocal instrument into consideration when considering actors for key roles.  One recent example was Mark Freiburger’s Dog Days of Summer, which featured New York voice-over stalwart Colin Key as narrator Phil Walden—and what an impact that had on the film’s opening sequence!

Now there is Home, with Oscar-winner Marcia Gay Harden (in 2000 for Pollock, though you may more clearly remember her nominated turn in Mystic River) starring as a fictionalized 1969 Lancaster, PA housewife, antique collector, and poet named Inga who is struggling through illness, motherhood, repressed childhood trauma, and a failing marriage.  On the soundtrack, Harden reads Inga’s poetry in strongly hushed tones, and the audio production design pulls every bit of fiber, passion, and warmth from Harden’s voice.  What an absolute delight!

The story—which is loosely inspired by director Mary Haverstick’s relationship with her own mother, Mary Stuart Haverstick (the actual author of the film’s poetry)—revolves around three central conflicts: Inga’s fascination with an aging friend’s rural colonial home, which evokes vivid memories of her own childhood; the paradoxical emotions resulting from those memories (the warmth of her hero father versus the coldness of her chronically-ill and drug-dependent mother); and the ways in which Inga’s own relationship with daughter Indigo mirrors the latter.

Inga’s struggling marriage is really peripheral to these primary conflicts, oddly, which is perhaps the film’s only weakness.  We never get the sense that husband Herman is anything but a placeholder in the script—which is perhaps part of the point.  Yes, Herman is one-dimensional (from Inga’s perspective). He is also wholly preoccupied with his own response to Inga’s physical issues; but frankly, so is Inga.  She’s a complete exponent of 1950s traditionalism, which cast women consistently in the role of identity-sublimating household servants.  As Inga struggles to define herself anew, it’s not surprising that she has little patience or room for Herman’s own struggle.  (Are things really so different today?)

Aside from being simply a beautiful, stirring, exquisite exploration of art and the human spirit, Home also offers some intriguing backstory, illuminated on the disc’s special features.  Not only does Mary Haverstick’s relationship with her poet mother bear biographical similarities to that of Indigo and Inga, Harden’s own daughter Eulala Scheel portrays Indigo with a fierceness that presumably demonstrates an unusual mother-daughter closeness which doesn’t fear the emotional depths that acting often plumbs.

“Change is a part of life,” Inga explains to Indigo in the opening sequence, as the two lie on a picnic blanket calling out shifting shapes in clouds.  “I hate that,” her daughter replies, noting that she prefers a cloud to stay in its present, delightful shape.  “It might change into something wonderful,” Inga rejoins—and it sounds like a platitude at that point, because we don’t know the change with which Inga has already fought, and survived.  “Change can be wonderful.”  But Indigo isn’t convinced, arguing that “it never is.”  And that’s because she only knows how change at home is impacting her.

As the film thoughtfully and gently winds it way through explorations of mistakes and outright failures, Haverstick’s writing and direction manages a stirring and open-ended optimism for those whose lives seem headed onto the shoals.  “…From earth to house, and house to earth, a perfect weave” read the concluding lines of one expectation-bending poem.  It’s a perfect description of the film, which integrates a lush, pastel natural palette with the harsh realities of domestic life.

And it’s all beautiful.

This is a delightful, nearly-perfect film for a thoughtful evening at home, a cathartic exorcising of domestic demons, a bonding experience for mothers and daughters, and a way for women to process their illnesses.  I can’t recommend this film—for its target audience, and somewhat beyond—heartily enough.

Home is rated PG-13 for “some disturbing thematic material.”  The politically-incorrect 1960s are not at all sanitized here, and I’m surprised that the rating doesn’t mention the adult use of alcohol and tobacco.  This is big-kid stuff, at the very least, if you’re going to watch it with your daughters.

Courtesy of a national publicist, Greg screened a promotional screener of Home.