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| 'Married Life’ grasps at mediocrity | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| By Craig Outhier, Get Out | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| March 27, 2008 | ||||||||||||||||||||||
Quite criminally, director Ira Sachs and co-writer Oren Moverman, adapting from the 1953 pulp mystery novel “Five Roundabouts to Heaven,” have taken a bunch of terrific actors and milked them of their most watery, bland performances. Wearing a garish air of tragic gentility like an expensive scarf he might have picked up at Saks, Chris Cooper (“Adaptation”) plays Harry Allen, a well-to-do businessman and old-school gentleman who, unbeknownst to wife Pat (Patricia Clarkson), is having an affair with the young, vivacious war widow Kay, played by a vacuous Rachel McAdams (“The Love Letter”). Harry would like to divorce Pat but worries what the strain might do to the poor woman’s nerves. “You know how I hate to see people suffer,” he tells close friend Richard (a typically urbane Pierce Brosnan) over cocktails at their favorite bar. So what does he do? Well, plots to murder her, naturally. And it seems like the most natural thing in the world, judging from the director’s nonthreatening tempo, Brosnan’s wistful narration and composer Dickon Hinchliffe’s pedestrian strings. The upshot: The filmmakers chose to view Harry as he views himself, as the sympathetic instrument of a mercy killing. Is it satire? If so, “Married Life” is a strikingly limp attempt at it, even when Richard discovers that Pat is having an affair of her own and rejects divorce for the same, skewed reasons as her husband. To his credit — sort of — journeyman director Sachs (“Forty Shades of Blue”) keeps a tight rein on his cast: there’s never a wink, never the slightest hint, that the actors see their characters for the emotional jokers they really are. Too bad. A wink here and there might have sharpened the director’s point. One must also consider the possibility that “Married Life” isn’t satirical at all, but an earnest attempt to synthesize the heaving 1950s melodrama of Douglas Sirk (“Magnificent Obsession”). Cosmetically, it’s pretty good impersonation — but where’s the passion, self-loathing and soul? And what’s the point? Todd Haynes perfected the faux ’50s melodrama with “Far From Heaven” back in 2002. The filmmakers — via Brosnan’s all-seeing, all-knowing Brit — attempt to slap a bow on this Styrofoam mess by reminding us that, when it comes to our spouses, we never really know what goes on in their heads. Maybe so, but here, the only head I’m worried about is the director’s. REVIEW 'Married Life’Cast: Pierce Brosnan, Chris Cooper, Patricia Clarkson, Rachel McAdams Behind the scenes: Directed by Ira Sachs, from a script by Sachs and Oren Moverman Rating: PG-13 (thematic elements and a scene of sexuality), 90 minutes — grade: D+ Contact Craig Outhier by email, or phone (480) 898-5683 |
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