Coming back from World War II, Martin Sheen is greeted by his parents as they really are and not the adult pretenses they orchestrated to bring up a child...It is a crash course in growing up, between fighting in the war and now being an adult and seeing things for what they truly are..His parents (Patricia Neal and Jack Albertson) fought all their lives to be one notch better than most people who experienced the Depression, they are proud of their summer home and their apartment in New York City...They detest the term "Shanty Irish" because it serves as a resentful motivation due to what it represents. The parents realize the price they paid for assimilation into American culture!! Both of them gave up in life a long time ago, and they will remain cynical in their outlook in life because they are tired of disappointments winning out!!...Suddenly disillusionment is as visible as the kitchen wallpaper!!! The roses Martin Sheen bring home to his mother (supposedly from his father) symbolize an uplifting emotion that never prevailed in the Cleary household!! (The parent's love and marital bond was constantly in question!!!) This coupled with the fifty dollars in quarters that Patricia Neal had been saving all of her adult life which she decides to take and spend in one weekend, creates a spark for a family always bludgeoned by mediocrity...The patronizing demeanor to the mother, the placatory concessions to the father, and the wry and sanctimonious disenchantment with the son, indicates an anger all three of them have for the fact that the entire household situation has dramatically changed without warning!! Martin Sheen has now become thoroughly aware of the fact that his parents' happiness has abrupt and desultory conclusions!! The important bond at the end of the movie is the fact that they all love each other, and all three of them are willing to prove this to each other the hard way!!..What they truly had ambitions for will never happen, even probably for the son (Martin Sheen) because failure in terms of egotistical accomplishment in this household is handwriting on the wall. Adulthood is not about success nor sophistication, it is about acceptance..This movie is a superb character portrayal...It encompasses a 360 degree perspective on what family members go through to fully understand one another, this includes a very distasteful compromising forgiveness by way of accepting the frustration of unanswered questions and deliberate unexplainable shortcomings!! Human inadequacies of this nature are often times neglected in a movie because the characters in a lot of movies are totally flat!!. "The Subject was Roses" was a film which was tremendously bolstered by well accomplished actors who thoroughly comprehended their roles, thus doing an excellent job of depicting a situation that deals with emotional failure being the norm, rather than the exception to the rule!!! EXCELLENT!!!...I GIVE IT A 10!!!!
Review of The Subject Was Roses
