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Jonathan Pryce

The Wife – Support, Loyalty, and Resentment

August 14, 2018 by Darrel Manson Leave a Comment

This may be the perfect time for The Wife to find its way to the screen. It seems almost tailor made for the Time’s Up movement. Perhaps the fact that Jane Anderson’s screenplay (and Meg Wolitzer’s book it is based on) is fifteen years old reflects the way women have had a difficult time getting their stories out. And this film truly speaks to that issue in a clear and loud voice.

Joe (Jonathan Pryce) and Joan (Glenn Close) Castleman have been together for nearly forty years. They each have their role in the marriage. Joe is gregarious and often quite full of himself. He is a world renown author. Joan is quiet and spends most of her time being a buffer between Joe and the rest of the world—including their son David (Max Irons), an aspiring writer who futilely seeks his father’s affirmation, and Nathaniel Bone (Christian Slater) who is determined to write Joe’s biography—with or without authorization.

(I should note at this point that with this film, the awards season is officially open. I’m sure that actors and filmmakers will be seriously considered by various groups. The lead performance are especially strong.)

As the film opens, Joe learns he was been awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. This is the pinnacle of a long career. As the couple moves toward the ceremony in Stockholm, however, it becomes a time when long buried resentments return to life. The story shifts between the present and the Castlemans’ past from the time they met in 1958, when Joe taught creative writing to Joan in college and the early years of their marriage and careers. (The younger versions of Joe and Joan are played by Harry Lloyd and Annie Starke.) There are compromises that have had to be made—especially by Joan.

In one of the flashbacks, Joe introduces Joan to Elaine Mozel (Elizabeth McGovern), a woman author who dissuades Joan from following a career in writing because people only pay attention to male authors. Joan believes “Writers have to write.” Elaine counters, “Writers have to be read.” This encounter causes Joan to put her own writing career on hold, but she becomes Joe’s primary supporter as his career begins to flourish. (Just how that support happens becomes a key part of the story.)

Over the years the roles they have been forced into grate on both Joe and Joan. They each have their own ways of dealing with the falsehoods and compromises that have made up their relationship. But as the Nobel ceremony draws near, it brings all the feelings they have held inside for decades to the surface and their family is about to implode. If the key secret that would-be biographer Bone is seeking to reveal were to come out, everything the Castlemans have created could be brought to naught.

The film reflects the sexism that was intrinsic to the times (and in many ways continues still). The roles Joe and Joan played within the marriage were the social reality of the day. So too was the dismissal of women’s voices in literature. Things may have improved since that time, but it is important that the film never looks at blatant sexism, but rather at the more subtle ways women were (and often still are) discouraged from seeking and achieving full acceptance in not only the arts, but in many (most) professions.

It is this point that makes the film so fitting for a time when Hollywood is struggling to find more ways of bringing women’s talents and voices to the fore. It should be noted that this film involves a number of women in creating this film: the screenwriter who adapted the book of a woman writer, and most of the producers of the film. The film is, however directed by Björn Runge, of whom screenwriter Jane Anderson says in press notes, “[He} is the most feminist of male directors!” The inclusiveness of the production is very much in line with the story it tells.

Photos courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics

 

Filed Under: Film, Reviews Tagged With: #timesup, Annie Starke, based on a novel, Björn Runge, Christian Slater, Elizabeth McGovern, Glenn Close, Harry Lloyd, Jane Anderson, Jonathan Pryce, Max Irons, Meg Wolitzer

The Man Who Invented Christmas – Dickens Meets Scrooge

November 15, 2017 by Darrel Manson Leave a Comment

Dickens’s A Christmas Carol is a well-loved story that has had various screen and stage versions and has become as much a part of Christmas as a crèche. The Man Who Invented Christmas is the story behind the story. It is a combination of a look at Dickens, his creative process, and enough of the retelling of the story that we feel we’ve heard it yet again.

In 1843, Charles Dickens (Dan Stevens) is struggling to make ends meet. He has had enormous success as a writer, even touring the U.S., but his last few books have been flops. His family has acquired a lavish lifestyle. He and his wife (Morfydd Clark) spend money as fast as Charles can borrow it. When he goes to pitch a Christmas book he has yet to even conceive, his publisher is uninterested. After all, hardly anyone still celebrated Christmas at that time. He vows to publish it himself and have it ready for Christmas. A pretty bold plan for a man with writers’ block.

At the same time, Dickens’s father John (Jonathan Pryce) comes to visit. The elder Dickens has been a bit of a scoundrel throughout Charles’s life. When John was taken to debtor’s prison, Charles had to work in a work house (cf., Oliver Twist). He has affection for his flamboyant father, but is also ashamed of him.

As he struggles to write the book, he conceives of Scrooge (Christopher Plummer), who comes to life for him, and the two have discussions about the “humbug” of Christmas. Scrooge, you’ll remember is a miserly, self-contained misanthrope. He is not at all like Dickens, which make the two of them struggle over the meaning of the book, and hence Christmas. Many of the things that end up in the book have a genesis in Charles’s day to day life. As such, all of the main beats of A Christmas Carol show up as lines or images at some point in the film so that we come away feeling as if we’ve experienced the story in a new way.

The structure of A Christmas Carol is built around a series of visits from ghosts that show the past, present, and future. As Dickens develops the story around those points of time, the story we watch takes us back to Dickens’s past, the troubles of his present, and the unknown possibilities that rely on the success of this book.

The Man Who Invented Christmas also carries the same message as A Christmas Carol: that the message of Christmas is about loving and sharing with others. For Scrooge, that discovery comes with an understanding of mortality. He becomes aware that all his wealth will mean nothing in the grave. He lives a miserable life when all he cares about is money, but is reborn when he learns to share what he has. Likewise, Dickens must learn that his fame is just as empty as Scrooge’s miserliness. His past—especially in regard to his father—has hardened him within his own family. He must escape the resentments that have consumed his life if he is to find the joy of Christmas that he has been writing about.

Photos courtesy of Bleecker Street

Filed Under: Film, Reviews Tagged With: A Christmas Carol, Bharat Nalluri, Charles Dickens, Christmas, christopher plummer, Dan Stevens, Jonathan Pryce, Morfydd Clark

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