Books, Shows and Movies that Capture Family Life—and All of the Complications - The Wall Street Journal

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FAMILY PORTRAIT Olivier Assayas’s 2008 film ‘Summer Hours’ depicts generations spinning in different directions, says... — FAMILY PORTRAIT Olivier Assayas’s 2008 film ‘Summer Hours’ depicts generations spinning in different directions, says playwright Richard Nelson. ‘It’s a gorgeous film about what’s lost and known, ultimately, in a family.’
Photo: IFC Films/Everett Collection

By Donna Bulseco

May 5, 2020 3:15 pm ET

Gloria Calderón Kellett

Co-creator/showrunner of ‘One Day at a Time,’ a reimagining of Norman Lear’s classic ’70s sitcom, now on Pop TV

“Family is an interesting word: There’s the one you’re born with and the one you create. Growing up I loved the ’Anne of Green Gables’ series by L.M. Montgomery, about an orphan girl and a brother and sister who need help on a farm, and the nontraditional family that grew from that. I love ‘Vida’ [on Starz] about two sisters and the chosen family helping them on their path. It’s about the support systems we create at work or with friends; during a time of quarantine, that feels especially important.”

Richard Nelson

Playwright/director of ‘The Apple Family’ plays, ‘The Gabriels’ and ‘The Michaels,’ all presented at New York’s Public Theater

“ ‘Eccentric’ leads me to think of the Addams Family. How about ‘complicated’? The opening of ‘Anna Karenina’ is a great start to complex family dynamics: ‘every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.’ ’Long Day’s Journey into Night’—for me the greatest American play—has a plot about a family that was so personal [Eugene] O’Neill didn’t want it performed until 25 years after his death. And Olivier Assayas’s ‘Summer Hours’ (2008) is a gorgeous film about what’s lost and known, ultimately, in a family.”

Robert Kolker

Author of ‘Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family’

“I love ‘The World According to Garp’ by John Irving. Garp has real issues with his mother, who is a larger-than-life character. Both are eccentric, but as an adult he reevaluates everything he once knew about her. ‘American Pastoral’ by Philip Roth is about a family at the height of American optimism imploding at a time when core assumptions are being pushed. There is the father, his beautiful wife and their ‘perfect’ child, who flies off the rails. It took my breath away!”

—Edited from interviews by Donna Bulseco