Smile Politely. Speak Directly. A Champaign-Urbana Culture Blog

There is that old maxim that you never know what you’ve got until it’s gone. Apparently Harry Allen (Chris Cooper) has never heard this or he discounts it out of hand thinking that this saying pertains to others, not him. You see, his situation is unique. He has a lovely wife, Pat (Patricia Clarkson), who helps him run their tidy suburban home and plays the role of faithful wife at every turn. Problem is she’s a bit too sexual for Harry. While she equates the act with the feeling of love, he would like a deeper, emotional connection she simply can’t provide. Harry, however, thinks he’s found just that with Kay (Rachel McAdams). Though much younger than him, he thinks he’s found true love with this wonderful woman with the only hurdle between them being his pesky wife. Harry’s solution to this is quite simple – he decides to kill Pat, knowing that there is no way she’ll survive the ordeal of a divorce and reasoning that “I can’t stand to see anyone suffer.”

So it goes in Ira Sachs’ Married Life, a homage to the films of Douglas Sirk mixed in with a dash of Double Indemnity and a whole passel of disdain for hypocrites everywhere. Set in 1949, the director along with his co-writer Oren Moverman have adapted John Bingham’s novel Five Roundabouts to Heaven, to show the underbelly of post-war suburban paradise. This is hardly an original premise but the story contains just enough twists and turns to keep you interested and intriguing, flawed characters who share the same common tiny hopes and dreams that American has promised them. It is their struggle in dealing with the discovery that this is all an illusion that makes the film intriguing.

A wrinkle immediately rears its ugly head once Harry confides to his best friend Richard (Pierce Brosnon) that he has met someone else. Upon seeing Kay himself, Richard immediately wants her and knows that he’d be willing to sacrifice his friendship for her. Unbeknownst to Harry, his buddy starts to woo his girl on the side, attention that the young widow interprets initially as simple friendship, as he plots out how to end his marriage, flirting with the idea of telling Kay the truth, only to decide on killing her after conveniently meeting a hitchhiker who puts a fatal idea in his head.

In recounting the plot, the film sounds like nothing more than an overwrought soap opera. As presented by Sachs and his cast, however, many nuances emerge and the film winds up being a moralistic character study rather than a lurid film noir. Each of the characters is conflicted and their states of mind are all plausible and sympathetic. Kay, whose husband died in the war, maintains a degree of innocence despite her experiences and sees in Harry the stability she’s been conditioned to value. Pat is a woman out of time whose sexual appetites are misunderstood by herself, society and her husband. Meanwhile, Richard may be seen as a cad for zeroing in on Kay but we see that he is a man who’s had so many women that he can tell that what he feels for her is genuine and worth risking a friendship over. And while it is hard to sympathize with a potential murderer, we wind up sympathizing with Harry, as in the end he is going through nothing more than a mid-life crisis, a condition he to is at a loss to explain or understand.

The strong cast is able to plumb the wide variety of emotions these characters go through and with the long list of accomplishments they possess, this comes as no surprise. It bears noting, however, that Cooper is exceptional here, running the gamut of emotions from disdain, depression and worry to elation, hope and peace. You won't find a better screen performance this year.

In the end, Married Life does not wind up where you might expect, though the logic it employs to get there is narratively sound. What begins as a tale of despair and death set against a false façade winds up being a story of rejuvenation and redemption in a suddenly vibrant landscape. This film isn’t so much about love that is lost but passion that is found.

Married Life opens today at the Beverly 18 in Champaign
Runtime: 1h 30min — Rated PG-13 — Drama