Patricia Clarkson and Chris Cooper star as a married couple undergoing some serious challenges — including infidelity and murder. (Photo courtesy Sony Pictures Classics)
advertisement
advertisement
|
GREG MARZULLO
Friday, March 28, 2008
The sanctity of marriage has been wielded like a cultural cudgel for the past decade, yet gay people can’t help but notice how “unholy” many straight marriages are (Eliot Spitzer, anyone?). That venerable institution gets an ironic, and ultimately touching, treatment in gay director Ira Sachs’ “Married Life,” starring Pierce Brosnan, Chris Cooper, Rachel McAdams and the ever-amazing Patricia Clarkson.
Poor Henry Allen (Cooper) is in a bind. After years of marriage with his hot-to-trot, but, in his mind, unromantic wife, Pat (Clarkson), he’s found springtime in the face and body of a hot young thing, Kay (McAdams). Henry tells his best friend, Richard (Brosnan), about his new love and that he’s going to leave Pat at long last and set up shop with Kay, whom he introduces to Richard in a café.
After one look at the gorgeous young lass (helped along by the hairstyle and fashions of post-World War II America, during which the film is set), the womanizing Richard can’t bear the thought of his old chum shacking up with the buxom blond and begins hatching a plan to woo the young lady away from her sentimental new beau.
Henry, though, doesn’t notice any of the intrigue, because he’s plotting to kill Pat. After all, he reasons, he doesn’t want to hurt her, and the end of the marriage would be a crushing blow to this woman who loves him so deeply. In his logic, killing her (painlessly, of course) is a way to let her down easy and avoid any messy emotional dramas.
Nothing is ever simple in love and war, though, and as all the characters get nearer to the film’s climax, surprising twists abound. Richard, normally a happily satisfied cad, wants more than just a quickie with Kay; Kay herself reveals a heart broken by the loss of a husband during the war; Pat has some notable secrets of her own; and pathetic Henry finds that he actually can’t live without his longtime companion.
WHILE THE STORY isn’t groundbreaking in any significant way (boy — or in this case man-old-enough-to-be-her-father — meets girl, other boy takes girl, original boy finds that home is where the heart is), the characters are so lovingly portrayed that it’s hard not to laugh and cry during their missteps and misfortunes.
Cooper, in particular, creates such a broken-hearted portrait that you forget he’s about to commit murder. In his hands, Henry isn’t the typical victim of a middle-aged crisis, tooling around with bimbos in a new car. He’s a sensitive soul who has most certainly lost his way and might not have ever found his niche in the first place.
Clarkson is, as usual, spot-on. Whether she’s blatantly declaring that the only real way to show love is through sex or dissolving into tears at the revelation that her husband is no longer loves her, Clarkson creates a fully fleshed out character who becomes symbolic of a pre-feminism generation that robbed of autonomy.
Brosnan is his regular charming self, delivering lines with dry British wit, but never stepping over the line into cliché, and McAdams turns in a strong performance as a young widow with grace, ease and subtlety.
Perhaps what works best in “Married Life” is the setting. If this story were placed in 2008, all the philandering, attempted murder and girl-stealing would come off as obvious and meaner than it does during the mid-20th century. Yet in a time of Ozzie-and-Harriet familial bliss, these elements blend into an ironic commentary on the myth America weaves for itself about its upright (and uptight) social history.
More often than not, the picturesque home in the suburbs complete with white fence, dog and happy children was a hotbed for dissatisfaction, philandering and, in grimmer cases, abuse and misery. Perhaps part of Sachs’ intention was to shine a light on the American family at its most idyllic time — a decade that’s now recalled as being steeped in the family values America should reflect today. Thankfully, “Married Life” reminds us what those “values” really looked like.
|
 |
