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Sally Field’s Five Stages of Grief in One Steel Magnolias Scene
“I have described it as taking a little razor blade to the inside of your heart.”
As M’Lynn, a mother who has just lost her daughter Shelby (Julia Roberts) to complications from diabetes, Field careens through peaks and valleys of grief so raw that you can’t watch it with dry eyes. Surrounded by her closest friends — Clairee (Olympia Dukakis), Truvy (Dolly Parton), Ouiser (Shirley MacLaine), and Annelle (Daryl Hannah) — M’Lynn starts her extended monologue from a place that sounds at first like stage five: acceptance. There was an AFI tribute to Shirley MacLaine a few years ago, where you told a funny story about her taking you aside during the scene and suggesting that if you run out of tears to sniff a Kleenex that had Vicks VapoRub or something on it.
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