“The Family Stone” is Diane Keaton’s tender onscreen goodbye

Before we meet any characters in “The Family Stone,” Thomas Bezucha’s 2005 holiday dramedy about a close-knit extended family meeting their prodigal son’s uptight new girlfriend for the first time, a cellphone rings. “This is Meredith,” a voice chirps, before Bezucha cuts from black to a shot of the back of a woman’s head, focusing on her hair that’s been tightly wound into a severe bun. Type-A busybody Meredith Morton (Sarah Jessica Parker) putters around a busy department store, flush with people as Christmas approaches, talking out the logistics of a deal she’s trying to close. “Combine the files, get them to me, I’ll look them over,” Meredith says to some poor assistant on the other end of the line, before her boyfriend, Everett Stone (Dermot Mulroney), can get her off the call so they can finish picking out gifts. For a film that’s ostensibly about the picture-perfect joys of a family Christmas, this looks more like holiday bedlam than bliss.

But things are quieter just after the opening credits, as Bezucha settles into the Stone house. In the sprawling, snow-covered New England colonial, the family’s matriarch, Sybil (Diane Keaton), sits lost in thought, staring at the Christmas tree and cherishing the last minutes of calm before the festivities begin. Sybil’s pensive, slightly fraught expression disappears the moment her son Thad (Tyrone Giordano) and his husband Patrick (Brian White) arrive, calling out to Sybil for hugs. The men are followed by the Stone patriarch, Kelly (Craig T. Nelson), arriving home with fresh brownies, and younger sister Amy (Rachel McAdams) rolling up to the house with an NPR tote and a basket of dirty laundry. Eldest sister, Susannah (Elizabeth Reaser), mercurial youngest son Ben (Luke Wilson), and boy wonder Everett aren’t far behind. Suddenly, Sybil’s house is full again. And as chaotic as the mob is, it’s the mess she waits all year for, the type that will make it all the more difficult to accept that this is her last Christmas with her family.

Following Keaton’s death last week at the age of 79, tributes and touching remarks for the late Hollywood heavyweight poured in. Throughout her 55-year career, Keaton amassed no shortage of truly iconic roles — from “Annie Hall” to “The First Wives Club”; “Father of the Bride” to “The Godfather” — playing complicated, headstrong women who refused to be pinned down. Yet, it’s Keaton’s work in “The Family Stone” that immediately jumped to the front of my mind, perhaps because it’s the performance I’ve returned to most, at least once every Christmas for almost 20 years.

In the two decades since the film’s (bizarrely) middling theatrical debut, “The Family Stone” has become a classic in its own right, appropriately lauded for its warm, realistic depiction of family dynamics and unexpected holiday revelations, holding Keaton at its center. As a mother desperate for a final, perfect Christmas with her family, Sybil Stone is one of the finest, most lucid depictions of what Keaton stood for in her life and career, liberally doling out grace yet standing no bullsh*t. In Bezucha’s film, Keaton confronts mortality and all of the lingering regret, fear and hope that come with it, reminding us that sometimes, we have to say goodbye long before we’re ready, before it’s ever fair. And as much as “The Family Stone” feels like an all-too-fitting farewell for its star, it’s just as much an indication that no one is ever really lost, so long as we keep their memory alive.

The problem is, no one wants to be a memory. It’s unbearable enough as it is to be away from our loved ones for any reason; being separated forever, through no will of our own, is inconceivable. And yet, we spend our whole lives staring down this inevitable future, trying our best not to think about it while, at the same time, attempting to make every day count while we have it. The holidays make the melancholy even more acute, but perhaps that’s also why they can be so cheerful, too. Christmas is an annual excuse to gather and be merry, to give and to get. We practice reciprocity to remember how wonderful it feels to be the reason for someone’s smile creeping across their face, and relish the opportunity to capture it in photos that preserve the joy and the calm, should we ever need to return to them in less euphoric moments. The post-holiday depression doesn’t arrive when all of the gifts have been unwrapped and the food has been eaten; it comes when one realizes that this kind of happiness — where we’re allowed and even encouraged to love so unabashedly — is finite. Like life, Christmas can’t last forever.

But that impermanence is also what makes the holidays so special. A feeling can’t be exceptional if we experience it all the time, and that’s why Sybil and the Stone family are so committed to milking all of the mirth they can from their Christmas traditions — and why Meredith’s introduction to the brood throws things off-course. Though Meredith and the Stones are similarly ritualistic, Everett’s new girlfriend’s rigidity rubs against the Stones’ adaptable attitudes. Meredith is long-winded and short-sighted, unable to take a hint, let alone relax. Her high-strung sensibilities might align with Everett’s mind for business, but Meredith certainly isn’t the kind of woman that can loosen up the eldest son’s stiff demeanor. Naturally, Sybil can’t stand the thought of her first-born child limiting his worldview, especially because Everett was the one to expand hers. In the privacy of their room after the whole family arrives, Kelly puts it plainly to his wife: “[Meredith] is a fine woman, but she doesn’t seem to know or trust herself very well, which means, I’m afraid, that our Everett may not know himself at all.”

Hoping to give her blessing and her mother’s wedding ring to her son — “The Family Stone” remains a very clever double entendre — Sybil’s plans are quickly thwarted by this realization. Now, Sybil isn’t just worried about having the perfect Christmas, she’s worried about whether she did her job as a mother successfully, and if there’s any time left to change what’s already written. Throughout the film, Sybil and the Stones struggle with the idea of fate and inevitability, of what they can and cannot change. Despite a double mastectomy and extensive treatment, Sybil’s cancer has come back. Just like motherhood, you can put all of your energy and effort into trying to improve something, only for it to change the second you take your eyes off it. Control is not guaranteed, and as a parent of five very different children, Sybil knows that better than anyone. But life has a funny way of reminding us of things we already learned long ago.

As remarkable as Keaton was onscreen throughout her entire career, her performance in “The Family Stone” stands out as a singularly underappreciated moment in her filmography. When the movie was filmed, Keaton was still a relatively new mother, navigating the trials of becoming a parent in her 50s after adopting her daughter, Dexter, in 1996 and her son, Duke, in 2001. As Sybil, Keaton brings an unparalleled tenderness and curiosity, a picture of motherhood that’s far more realistic than it is ideal — no matter the degree of house envy on display in Bezucha’s film. But most importantly, Sybil is positively brimming with love and affection for her children, with Keaton supplying a palpable maternal warmth that glows as softly as a string of Christmas lights. Keaton is not just playing a mother; she’s embodying what it means to be a parent, showing what it looks like to love wholly, even with flaws. After Meredith makes a faux pas during a family dinner, asking Thad and Patrick marble-mouthed questions about the nature versus nurture debate, Sybil locks eyes with her son. “I love you,” she begins, “and you are more normal than any other a**hole sitting at this table.”

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Shortly after, “The Family Stone” segues into one of the most potent, magnificent ruminations on life and death ever seen onscreen, so simple in its execution that it sneaks up on me every time. After a botched Christmas Eve dinner, the Stones spend their evening fractured, just before the big day rolls around. Back in their room, Kelly assures Sybil that they will all be fine, implying that they’ll stay that way after she’s gone. Gazing into her husband’s eyes, Sybil responds with an unassuming knockout of an admission: “I’m scared.” Over a montage set to Judy Garland’s rendition of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” Bezucha checks in with every member of the Stone family. We see fear and desire; crumbling relationships, lasting companionship, and new love; denial and reluctant acceptance. It’s the human experience, all rolled into one gut punch that’s designed to push every last merry, mirthful little button viewers have. And without Keaton setting the montage into motion, it could easily ring manipulative. Instead, the sequence feels true to the holiday season’s bittersweetness and how nice it can be to let the sound of the ticking clock fade away, if only for a few cold days each year.

The clock resumes, of course. There’s no stopping it. But even amid all of the holiday chaos, there are memories just waiting to be preserved, new experiences that we’ll take with us through the years that will fill our conversations over hot chocolate and tree decorating — snapshots we can keep in our mind or blow up wide to frame and hang by the tree. Even when Sybil is gone, her memory remains ever-present, found in the family she created and the traditions they’ll practice and pass down in her honor. And while it hurts to lose someone as prolific as Keaton, how marvelous that her work in “The Family Stone” reminds us that it’s not just what we do with our lives, but who we spend them with that counts.