The Quiet Storm of Mary Tyler Moore and Bernadette Peters

The Last Best Year (1990) Review

Starring…Mary Tyler Moore and Bernadette Peters

The Last Best Year is the pinnacle 90’s television movie, but with Mary Tyler Moore and Bernadette Peters deciding to leave absolutely no crumbs in their performances, it became a film.

As with most low budget TV movies, you have to make the conscious decision to ignore the clunky script, awkward slo-mo, and completely unnecessary camera movements. These are usually the elements I would judge a movie on, but I didn’t watch this for the production quality—I watched it for the performances. And my God, the performances.

This movie had all the clichés you look for in a television movie: an affair, cancer, dead parents, childhood trauma, a long-lost child. But as these tropes unfold, Bernadette Peters and Mary Tyler Moore embody their characters with a gentle tenderness that no longer makes the cliché feel cheesy.

Bernadette Peters plays Jane, a successful career woman diagnosed with terminal cancer, and Mary Tyler Moore steps in as her therapist, Wendy, who has her own demons to deal with. The Last Best Year follows Jane as she grapples with her life coming to an end with Wendy’s guidance. But the true heart of this film is the relationship between Jane and Wendy. Jane, who has spent her life independent and alone, must allow herself to be cared for and loved. Wendy has to allow herself to love somebody who will inevitably leave. You get to watch both women reluctantly navigate this vulnerability, beginning to rely on each other so completely and build a community out of grief.

What’s so wonderful about this movie is that neither Bernadette Peters nor Mary Tyler Moore was known for their serious acting when it was released. Not to say that they’d only done comedy, but a drama like this is very rare in their filmographies. What astounds me is how quiet their performances are. They don’t try to fill the screen with the drama of it all—they make you lean in. That is one thing I find so breathtaking about Bernadette Peters in particular. Here is a Broadway stage actor who doesn’t demand the stage with an all encompassing loudness but with a soft vulnerability, even in her powerful belts. Jane has that soft vulnerability and doesn’t require your sympathy or attention, but you end up feeling everything for her just the same. Mary Tyler Moore also brings such a genuine ferventness to the role that I often found myself quite shaken after one of her scenes. This is when the overdone camera movements and TV dramatizations become a bit of a nuisance.

In one scene, Jane explains a dream to Wendy and like most dreams, it takes odd turns and has strange details. Well, they recreated this bizarre dream visually while Jane is telling the story, but I think it would have been so much more impactful if they had just let the camera sit in front of Ms. Peters. These performers don’t need special effects to dramatize their words—they can draw you in with a blink and keep you there with a breath.

As much as you wish things turn out differently, this is, after all, a movie about Jane’s last, best year—a year of building beautiful relationships and then having to say goodbye. The story culminates in a Christmas scene of carols and gifts in a cozy living room because Jane loves Christmas (of course she does, it’s a TV movie). But it’s not actually Christmas. The festivities have been created for Jane, because she probably won’t live to see the holiday. If that doesn’t make you emotional, Scrooge, just wait a moment for the next scene when Wendy has to say goodbye to Jane. Not just goodbye, but…

“There’s a place for you that’s light and warm and safe, and when you’re ready—you brought love and joy to so many people. All of us, all of us here tonight have grown to love you. I did. You can carry that love with you wherever you go.”

I don’t often often start full on crying while watching movies, by the end of this, I was sobbing into my pillow.

Did you know: Mary Tyler Moore and Bernadette Peters became very close friends on the set of The Last Best Year, even starting the organization Broadway Barks together a couple years later. You can see Bernadette Peters sing her praises on the recently released documentary Being Mary Tyler Moore (highly recommend).

Watch or not: If you can find a copy of this movie, watch it. It’s truly so beautiful.