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Recognize Anyone in These Films?By Mary Shafferand Jerry Bunin Telegram-Tribune ''All happy families are alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own fashion.'' Tolstoy's famous opening to ''Anna Karenina'' remains true today, when self-help books, 12-step programs, repressed memories and dysfunctional families are commonplace. Whether it is England 800 years ago, Russia 100 years ago or America then and now, how a family deals with conflict is part of every human story, a key to every personality. Some children honor parents with heartwarming tales celebrating Mother's and Father's Day; others dwell on mostly painful self- examinations of why a family fails and occasionally reconciles. Great films about families owe more to the dysfunctional side, just as ''Paradise Lost'' and Dante's ''Inferno'' are more widely read and enjoyed than ''Paradise Regained'' and ''Paradiso.'' The raw emotions released when families war have created some of the screen's most memorable writing and acting and some of our favorite films. The most critically-acclaimed film last year was a disturbing contemporary documentary about a real dysfunctional family. ''Crumb'' traces the famous underground cartoonist and his even weirder brothers against a painful childhood that produced great art and three deeply wounded adults. Physical and psychological childhood scars created ''Sybil'' (1976), the multiple personality Sally Field played in a tour de force performance that earned her an Emmy and respect. The film recreates how as a child Sybil created 17 distinct personalities to preserve and protect herself against the daily torture she suffered at the hands of her warped mother. Sybil is reunited by a psychologist, Joanne Woodward, who won her Oscar playing another real multiple personality in ''The Three Faces of Eve'' (1957). Some superficially healthy families fall apart after a tragedy as in ''Ordinary People'' (1980), Robert Redford's Oscar-winning and emotionally powerful directorial debut. The film chronicles the deterioration of a well-to-do, apparently perfect family after the elder of their two sons dies in a boating accident. Donald Sutherland and Mary Tyler Moore seem to have everything except the ability to communicate their feelings to each other or their suicidal younger son (Oscar winner Timothy Hutton). A younger son's illness also ignites a family crisis in ''Long Day's Journey Into Night'' (1962). Sydney Lumet's faithful adaptation of Eugene O'Neill's cathartic autobiographical play earned its four stars best acting honors at Cannes. Dean Stockwell is the young writer diagnosed with consumption. Jason Robards reprises his stage triumph as his alcoholic older brother. British stage actor Ralph Richardson plays their pompous, penny-pinching actor father. But it is Katherine Hepburn's lonely, drug-addicted mother who haunts the film and their lives as they spend 24 fog-enshrouded hours alternately consoling and blaming each other as they find, confess to and then hide from truths too painful to face. The approaching death of a parent often brings out the best and worst in a wounded child now grown into a damaged adult. In ''Five Easy Pieces'' (1970), the first in a series of his defining performances, Jack Nicholson epitomizes youthful alienation as a man who responds to crisis by running away. He rejects his musical gift and family legacy, abandons his pregnant girlfriend, apologizes to his dying father for wasting his youth and then runs away again. A decade earlier, Paul Newman played a similar prodigal son who returns home to confront his dying father in Tennessee Williams' ''Cat on a Hot Tin Roof'' (1958). Like Nicholson, Newman has never grown up, preferring to drink himself into oblivion rather than face his past and take responsibility for his present as the family heir. Newman and his brother got anything they wanted from their father (Burl Ives) except the love they really needed until one stormy night unleashes an emotional torrent that clears the air and leads toward potential reconciliation. Although not nominated as the dying Big Daddy, Ives won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar that year for ''The Big Country.'' The battle of wills in ''The Lion in Winter'' (1968) is more than a bitter family quarrel. The fate of the British empire is at stake. Henry II (Peter O'Toole) reunites his exiled wife (Hepburn in an Oscar-winning role) and their three sons (including Anthony Hopkins in his film debut) to help choose his successor. A deadly power struggle follows. Everyone plots to get their way using whatever weapons they have, from strategic allies and lands to painful memories and past indiscretions. Most families don't fight over nations but the stakes are as important when the dinner table is the battlefield.
Mary Shaffer works at Cal Poly. Jerry Bunin is a Telegram-Tribune reporter. They wrote this based on personal experience.
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