The Wife

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This movie is well produced, well acted, well photographed and edited, and well directed; as you would expect from the information about it, as supplied here. Unfortunately, the story's banality is saved from summary ridicule by me, only because of the offered carrot: the Nobel Prize Ceremony. But the plot is so predictable, there are no surprises, in my opinion. None. At. All. In short: the story is of a married couple (Close, Pryce), both of whom are writers. They have a rebellious son (Irons) - also a budding writer - and a dutiful daughter, who is pregnant and close to term. The husband is a literary professor of high standing; the wife was one of his literature students before they married. In the first few minutes, we learn the husband will be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. We also soon learn that the husband is a womanizer from way back: it's how they got married in the first place, again as you quickly learn. The three travel to Stockholm for the Nobel ceremony. While there, the wife meets a literary hack (Slater) - a biographer - who wants permission to write the husband's biography and suggests there is a dramatic revelation in the offing. Subsequently, the wife evades the issue and the man. The Nobel ceremony is held, the husband gets the medal, there is a emotionally dramatic confrontation between the husband and wife back at the hotel, followed by the equally dramatic denouement. End of story. I leave you to discover the nature of that climax. So, watch and listen carefully for the clues. Without knowing the other nominees for that year's Academy Award, I can't comment upon Glenn Close's nomination for Best Actress; suffice to say she did a good job in a clichéd, boring story. Jonathon Pryce and the rest of the cast were suitably professional. Candidly, if you're interested, as I was, in finding out a bit about the Nobel Prize Awards Ceremony, then this outing is actually worth your time. Hence, recommended only for those so interested. Five out of ten. Barely. August 13, 2019

I'm glad Glenn Close didn't win the much predicted Oscar for this film. Not because I don't like Close, or think she wasn't good in the role (she's the best thing about the movie), but because this movie isn't good enough for her. Her winning would have been like Julianne Moore winning for "Still Alice," an actress who deserved to win for about ten previous movies finally winning for something mediocre. The central premise of "The Wife" becomes too unrealistic to support the film built around it. Close and Jonathan Pryce (also very good) try valiantly to carry the material, and the film is at its best when the two of them are going at it with simmering resentment. But by the end, the melodramatic plot developments had lost me, and I was mostly saddened that Close's considerable talents had been wasted on something beneath her. And what the hell is with the character of the son in this film? Why is he like 30 years old but acts like he's fifteen? And why does he hang around with his septuagenarian parents all the time? I started the film just being moderately annoyed by him, and ended by being actually skeezed out by him. Grade: C+

This movie reminded me a lot of "Big Eyes", the similar story of artist Margaret Keane, who for years created portraits of people with exaggerated features which her husband Walter then exhibited and took credit for. In Margaret's case though, she eventually became fed up and pressed a court case against the charlatan after they were divorced. I guess in a way, just as in the case of Margaret Keane, I was somewhat frustrated by Joan Castleman's (Glenn Close) reluctance to stand up for herself while her husband Joe (Jonathan Pryce) rose through the ranks of the literary world to the point where he was selected for a Nobel Prize in literature. What's particularly annoying was Joe's cavalier attitude about the fraud he was engaged in, having convinced himself that he really WAS writing the stuff that his wife 'fixed' for him. HIs arrogance and condescension was never more evident when in Stockholm, he berated the brand of champagne someone sent to him in a congratulatory gesture, and because it wasn't good enough for him, he offered it to his son, as if the son was more deserving of second class status than he was. That was particularly galling. Not having seen all the Best Actor contenders in their vying pictures this year yet, I don't think it's a stretch to suggest that Glenn Close holds a formidable position in her category. She was truly outstanding in the role of put upon wife who probably really did love her husband, though by her example, may not have loved herself half as much. The story line's suggestion that women wouldn't be held to the same standard of recognition for their writing as men are, however, did come across as somewhat hollow, in as much as there have been many great women writers of more than recent vintage. Why she felt she was subservient to that image said a lot about her own lack of self esteem, if not actual self confidence.

Let's get the important stuff out of the way first. The performances in this are fantastic- by that I mean the two leads- hopefully Close will finally get the Oscar she so richly deserved (and was denied) for Dangerous Liaisons (better film and performance). Pryce actually has the harder part, trying to humanize this well worn caricature of the insecure, unfaithful, almost irredeemable husband with hardly a single good trait. He succeeds so well that it is not until you process the film later that you realize how tilted the playing field has been. That is usually the mark of an insecure writer/filmmaker who fears if they don't "stack the deck" , the audience will reach the "wrong" conclusions- have a little faith and maybe let him be a good father or be a shmuck but a faithful one- muddy up the waters and give us something substantial to ruminate on . The premise of the film is embarrassingly simplistic- but it is not without possibilities. As the film drew to its close I couldn't help but think to myself "I can fix this- do you want me to fix this?" (I don't do "Star" ratings because I'm not a grade school teacher.)

Long drawn out, badly acted - though to be fair they had a rubbish script to use. Contrived plot, with nothing going for it. Wooden one dimensional characters and boring dragged out melodramatic presentation. Don't bother.

Glenn Close is Joan, the titular wife of Nobel prize winner, writer Joe. The couple, with their moody son David, travel to Stockholm for the ceremony, but what should be a happy event turns into the unravelling of all their secrets. Close as Joan, plays a type of passive-aggressive character I personally despise. She does a good job, but that did not make me like Joan a bit more. With a perennial fake smile frozen on her lips, Joan is the quintessential wronged wife who sticks to her philandering husband for reasons impossible to understand. Theirs seems to be a relationship based on lies and deception from the very beginning. Their life together is an exploitation of each other and a mountain of lies, not only to the public in general but also to their children. Also, the feminist twist of the plot failed to impress me. Joan allegedly gave up writing in the 50s, because "lady writers" were mocked by publishers, but we all know that lady writers always had a public and many of them wrote with great success even in earlier years (think Jane Austen, Agatha Christie, Dorothy Parker and countless others). Joan is just a coward who blames anybody else and society at large, for her failure. Should we feel sympathetic? Probably many will, because she fits in beautifully with our society of whiners.

What would it feel like to win a Nobel prize? That phone call in an early morning hour. Things that take place between then and your arrival to Stockholm. And after you arrive. What do you have to do? What will other recipients be like? How will you get along? The best thing about The Wife is that it lets you have a glimpse into that. Unfortunately, there's more to the film and I found the actual story somewhat problematic. It started showing cracks even before the big reveal. From small contrivances like Joe (Johnathan Price) appearing to be the only one given a photographer to follow him around to the younger version of him (Harry Lloyd) looking way too young to be a professor at an Ivy league school. As we learn more about him, that becomes even more questionable. The big reveal causes the movie to lose balance. As it probably should. Except, it doesn't necessarily happen for the right reasons. Maybe if they didn't go from point A to B and then straight to Z, it wouldn't have seemed so implausible. They give us a peek into somewhere around point G, but it does more harm than good. Without giving much away I will say that I found it hard to believe that Joan, as the great Glenn Close plays her, would never attempt to get published just because some embittered alumna scared her. Yes, it may have been harder for women to make it as writers, but they have done it - going way back to Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters. The filmmakers seem to imply that she just loved her husband that much. Except I found the young Joe so unlikable, that I just couldn't imagine loving that self absorbed, ungrateful shmuck. The old Joe is much more sympathetic. His constant munching on sweets reminded me of my husband. There's good chemistry between the elder actors. But it wasn't enough to sell the story for me. I feel kind of bad about it, but the character I found the most likable was not Joan, not Joe, not their their son (Max Irons) who spends the entire movie in various degrees of moping, but the supposedly sleazy biographer played by Christian Slater.