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People’s lives can take surprising turns. Maybe a husband’s wife cheats on him, or a man’s life savings (kept in gold coins) is stolen ... or maybe a child toddles into the life of a miser, changing both lives forever. Life is anything but predictable.
This is seen in the 1994 movie “A Simple Twist of Fate,” starring Steve Martin and Gabriel Byrne. Michael McCann (Martin) did not have an easy life — his wife cheated on him and was impregnated by someone else, his life savings was stolen and he was a lonely, unhappy miser. Yet by twists of fate, mistakes made by others (and by himself) and weird coincidences, some happiness finally finds its way into his life by way of a stray little girl.
Mathilda is the illegitimate daughter of Marsha Swanson, an irresponsible junkie, and John Newland, a prominent Kennedy-esque politician (Byrne). Newland doesn’t want his relationship with the strung-out junkie to be leaked out just as he is about to be elected as the mayor of a Pennsylvania town, so he pays her mother a weekly sum to keep her quiet. Actually, it’s more to feed her addiction so that she’ll be too high to blab to anybody about the identity of the father of her baby.
This arrangement seems to work for both Newland and Marsha until Newland’s brother Tommy (Stephen Baldwin) gets involved. Tommy suggests to Swanson that she deserves more than she’s getting, so she decides to try to go get it. Because Marsha is so strung-out, she decides that Tommy is right, and heads out to take her baby to see her daddy.
Unfortunately, people on heroin aren’t real clear on particulars, and Marsha doesn’t notice that her car is out of gas until she’s far out of town. When she dies in the snow, the baby toddles toward the nearest light — Michael McCann’s home.
After the mother is discovered dead and McCann realizes that this child is the only chance he has to regain any semblance of happiness, he fights to keep the child who adopted him.
McCann succeeds, with the help of Newland, and takes Mathilda into his home and his heart. Through the love of this child, he finds himself again, and can laugh, joke and even socialize with others. He finds new life by way of Mathilda.
Then all the problems begin.
Newland marries a woman who cannot have children and then decides that he now (ten years after the fact) wants to claim the child he rejected. A custody fight ensues, pitting the father that gave Mathilda life against the father who kept her living.
“A Simple Twist of Fate” is a poignant, emotional movie that is more than just a “chick flick” — it’s a movie that anyone can enjoy. Unfortunately, this moving, emotional film that was never given the critical or commerical recognition that it deserved. Both Martin and Byrne bring layer upon layer of emotional depth to their characters and the evolution of Martin’s character is a pleasure to watch.
Many people wonder what would happen if they turned left instead of right or entered one door instead of another. “A Simple Twist of Fate” shows that every little move made by a person has a profound impact on everyone else.
“A Simple Twist of Fate” is more than a story about a man and his child, or even about a man finding himself again. It shows that everything, even if it’s not apparent, is interconnected and everything has its effect on other things. In the simple lives of Michael McCann, Mathilda McCann and John Newland, twists of fate change everything forever. |
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