Secrets and sympathy make for a compelling 'Daughter'

Caroline (Emily Watson) helps Norah (Gretchen Mol) deliver twins, then takes the girl at the behest of David (Dermot Mulroney). (Chris reardon for lifetime)

If, as some say, we're as sick as the secrets we keep, then Dr. David Henry is seriously ailing. During a snowstorm in 1964, he delivers his wife's twins with the help of a nurse. The boy, Paul, is healthy, but little Phoebe has Down syndrome. Haunted by the loss of his own disabled sister, anxious to protect his wife from pain, David decides to institutionalize Phoebe immediately and tell his wife the twin died.

"The Memory Keeper's Daughter," the Lifetime movie premiering tonight at 9, shows how that secret catches up with David (Dermot Mulroney) over the decades, and how it infects everyone in his life, not least of all his wife, Norah (Gretchen Mol). Doomed to loneliness and guilt by what he knows, he retreats into a cold distance and leaves his family wanting. He spends his spare time obsessively taking photos, keeping memories, hiding behind his lens. The movie is about the slow death of his soul.

But, as readers of Kim Edwards's bestseller know, "The Memory Keeper's Daughter" is also about the equally compelling force of honesty. The nurse who helps David deliver the twins, Caroline (Emily Watson), takes Phoebe to an institution on that fateful night, per David's instructions, but she is disgusted by the conditions there. In a moment of passion as fierce as David's rejection of his infant daughter, Caroline keeps Phoebe, moves to another city, and begins crusading for the rights of people with Down syndrome.

While David is burying the truth under years of deception and denial, Caroline is struggling to make mainstream America see the disabled people it would rather ignore. David fears imperfection, Caroline celebrates it. Moving back and forth between their stories, "The Memory Keeper's Daughter" displays the consequences of cowardice and bravery simultaneously.

Yes, the movie is dense with themes. The deterioration of a man, the growing consciousness of his wife as she sheds her role as "the little woman," the changing thinking about people with Down syndrome and institutionalized care, the way the past deals with us if we don't deal with it - there's a lot of heft for a two-hour Lifetime melodrama. No question that "The Memory Keeper's Daughter" bites off more than it can chew, and the result is frequently superficial and sketchy, particularly with a late development regarding Caroline and David. The narrative leaps awkwardly from decade to decade, and director Mick Jackson relies too much on costuming to telegraph eras. Mulroney, Mol, and Watson don't have time to reveal the subtleties of their characters, with Mulroney particularly unsatisfying as he remains wooden throughout the arc of David's changes.

That said, the movie falls among Lifetime's better made-for-TV movie efforts. John Pielmeier's script doesn't demonize David - so many Lifetime movies all but put horns on their villains - nor does it strain to muster sympathy for his choices. David is the embodiment of what happens to people when they let their secrets define them, when they endow their life story with shame. He is also the product of a time when many believed "mongoloids" did not belong in "normal" households. Consistently, the movie comes from a place of compassion.

"The Memory Keeper's Daughter" is also sweetened by the presence of Krystal Hope Nausbaum, an actress with Down syndrome who plays Phoebe from ages 13 to 22. She brings to the film all the joy that anyone who has crossed paths with a Down syndrome person will recognize; but then she also has the dramatic chops to make Phoebe quite believable. She is the perfect vehicle for the movie's most touching message - all that we miss when we look away from the truth.

Matthew Gilbert can be reached at gilbert@globe.com. For more on TV, visit boston.com/ae/tv/blog/.