The Wife
Warning: this post contains major spoilers.
Roger Ebert once remarked that it’s tough to make movies about writers, because writing is quite difficult to show on film. However, if you wanted to make a movie about the egos of writers, you’ve got plenty of material. I can stay with certainty we can be an egotistical bunch (and I include myself in that class).
The Wife does that in a sly way, and it’s not even pro-single as much as it appears to be anti-marriage. I’m not anti-marriage per se (for others anyway), but it appeals to those baser instincts I have as a singles crusader.
From the moment I met Joe Castleman, as played by Jonathan Pryce, I just wanted to give him a good punch to the eye. When the Nobel Committee calls to congratulate him on winning his Nobel Prize in Literature, his first instinct is to get his wife on the phone – to either share in his celebration or console him if he loses. He can’t do it with just her in the room?
The movie is more about this wife, Joan, and Glenn Close deserved that Oscar nomination for that role. I didn’t see The Favourite, so I don’t know if Olivia Olman deserved the win. But Close’s facial expressions are masterful. I rewatched The Paper a few weeks ago, in which she plays a hard-charging editor of a New York daily newspaper. Joan is a very different character, very self-effacing, and I felt her pain as she absorbed all of the narcissism Joe exudes.
Brief plot description: Joe wins the Nobel Prize, and the film spans over a few days they spend in Stockholm, Sweden, where Joan takes stock of how her life as a wife has turned out.
Their courtship is a problem, to say the least. Joe is a young, handsome, MARRIED professor of creative writing; Joan is her student. They become intimate in his office after he critiques her short story. Of course, he gets fired (nowadays, that would be national news in higher education circles). But they do ride the relationship escalator, complete with the grandchild that’s born in the middle of an intense fight they have in their hotel room, right after Joe was about to cheat (yet again) with a pretty young photographer.
If you watch Close closely (no pun intended), you can see the pain she feels in her eyes, having submerged her own talent to support Joe’s. During a flashback, she’s told by a female writer not to pursue writing because women writers aren’t taken seriously (this was 1958, although I’m not sure how much things have really changed). SPOILER ALERT: Joan’s actually been writing all of Joe’s acclaimed novels.
The passive-aggressive comments run throughout the film. When Joan sees Joe’s pants on the floor and says, “I’m tired of picking up after you,” we can see the years of buried anger behind that comment. And there’s a theme of sexism throughout. The wife of a fellow Nobel winner, a scientist, has some scathing comments of her husband’s work. I would love to see the movie behind that dynamic.
Christian Slater appears in the movie as Nathaniel, a biographer who suspects the truth about Joe’s “writing.” He appears like the snake in the Adam/Eve dynamic, trying to get Joan to spill the beans. Later on, he talks to Joe’s resentful son, David, and tells him what he suspects. David’s been angry at this father for years. There’s a recurring conversation about a short story Joe can’t seem to give feedback on, which upsets David, but there appear to be years of tumult between the two.
At the end, after Joe has dishonored Joan’s wish not to thank her in his acceptance speech, the emotional floodgates open up; Joan unleashes over thirty years of buried resentment and announces her wish for a divorce. Immediately after, Joe dies of a heart attack, exemplifying those studies that married men live longer than single men. I’ll channel Bella and speculate that divorced men probably skew that curve quite heavily. After she calls the medics, she reverts to the role of nurturing wife and says, “I love you.” “You’re such a good liar” is Joe’s response.
On the plane ride back, after Nathaniel offers Joan his condolences, Joan threatens that if he maligns Joe in his biography, she will sue. The first time I saw this, I thought, Joan! Let that bastard have it! But, upon rewatching, I realized those motivations are more complex. Joan’s not thinking about Joe, she’s thinking about the readers who’ve benefited from reading his work. It brought to me an episode of The Simpsons, “Lisa the Iconoclast,” where Lisa discovers her town’s founder, Jebediah Springfield, was a fraud. She finds evidence and is about to announce it to the townspeople, but then she sees everybody is being their best selves as they celebrate town pride. She says, “Even the lie has value.” So it is quite magnanimous of her to do so. She also plans to tell her kids the truth.
As she stares at a blank page in her journal and looks at the camera with a renewed sense of vigor, we sense she’s about to start a new life, possibly as a happy singleton and published writer.
In most of the Acknowledgements of the books I read, the writer thanks a spouse or partner. I do wonder how much of that is for show at times. There are a few where the writer thanks friends and family. I tend to admire those much more; as a singleton, we have some additional burdens to bear. We do all the shopping, chores, finances, etc. To write a book as a solo is a remarkable accomplishment. I hope Joan does this someday.
Roger Ebert once remarked that it’s tough to make movies about writers, because writing is quite difficult to show on film. However, if you wanted to make a movie about the egos of writers, you’ve got plenty of material. I can stay with certainty we can be an egotistical bunch (and I include myself in that class).
The Wife does that in a sly way, and it’s not even pro-single as much as it appears to be anti-marriage. I’m not anti-marriage per se (for others anyway), but it appeals to those baser instincts I have as a singles crusader.
From the moment I met Joe Castleman, as played by Jonathan Pryce, I just wanted to give him a good punch to the eye. When the Nobel Committee calls to congratulate him on winning his Nobel Prize in Literature, his first instinct is to get his wife on the phone – to either share in his celebration or console him if he loses. He can’t do it with just her in the room?
The movie is more about this wife, Joan, and Glenn Close deserved that Oscar nomination for that role. I didn’t see The Favourite, so I don’t know if Olivia Olman deserved the win. But Close’s facial expressions are masterful. I rewatched The Paper a few weeks ago, in which she plays a hard-charging editor of a New York daily newspaper. Joan is a very different character, very self-effacing, and I felt her pain as she absorbed all of the narcissism Joe exudes.
Brief plot description: Joe wins the Nobel Prize, and the film spans over a few days they spend in Stockholm, Sweden, where Joan takes stock of how her life as a wife has turned out.
Their courtship is a problem, to say the least. Joe is a young, handsome, MARRIED professor of creative writing; Joan is her student. They become intimate in his office after he critiques her short story. Of course, he gets fired (nowadays, that would be national news in higher education circles). But they do ride the relationship escalator, complete with the grandchild that’s born in the middle of an intense fight they have in their hotel room, right after Joe was about to cheat (yet again) with a pretty young photographer.
If you watch Close closely (no pun intended), you can see the pain she feels in her eyes, having submerged her own talent to support Joe’s. During a flashback, she’s told by a female writer not to pursue writing because women writers aren’t taken seriously (this was 1958, although I’m not sure how much things have really changed). SPOILER ALERT: Joan’s actually been writing all of Joe’s acclaimed novels.
The passive-aggressive comments run throughout the film. When Joan sees Joe’s pants on the floor and says, “I’m tired of picking up after you,” we can see the years of buried anger behind that comment. And there’s a theme of sexism throughout. The wife of a fellow Nobel winner, a scientist, has some scathing comments of her husband’s work. I would love to see the movie behind that dynamic.
Christian Slater appears in the movie as Nathaniel, a biographer who suspects the truth about Joe’s “writing.” He appears like the snake in the Adam/Eve dynamic, trying to get Joan to spill the beans. Later on, he talks to Joe’s resentful son, David, and tells him what he suspects. David’s been angry at this father for years. There’s a recurring conversation about a short story Joe can’t seem to give feedback on, which upsets David, but there appear to be years of tumult between the two.
At the end, after Joe has dishonored Joan’s wish not to thank her in his acceptance speech, the emotional floodgates open up; Joan unleashes over thirty years of buried resentment and announces her wish for a divorce. Immediately after, Joe dies of a heart attack, exemplifying those studies that married men live longer than single men. I’ll channel Bella and speculate that divorced men probably skew that curve quite heavily. After she calls the medics, she reverts to the role of nurturing wife and says, “I love you.” “You’re such a good liar” is Joe’s response.
On the plane ride back, after Nathaniel offers Joan his condolences, Joan threatens that if he maligns Joe in his biography, she will sue. The first time I saw this, I thought, Joan! Let that bastard have it! But, upon rewatching, I realized those motivations are more complex. Joan’s not thinking about Joe, she’s thinking about the readers who’ve benefited from reading his work. It brought to me an episode of The Simpsons, “Lisa the Iconoclast,” where Lisa discovers her town’s founder, Jebediah Springfield, was a fraud. She finds evidence and is about to announce it to the townspeople, but then she sees everybody is being their best selves as they celebrate town pride. She says, “Even the lie has value.” So it is quite magnanimous of her to do so. She also plans to tell her kids the truth.
As she stares at a blank page in her journal and looks at the camera with a renewed sense of vigor, we sense she’s about to start a new life, possibly as a happy singleton and published writer.
In most of the Acknowledgements of the books I read, the writer thanks a spouse or partner. I do wonder how much of that is for show at times. There are a few where the writer thanks friends and family. I tend to admire those much more; as a singleton, we have some additional burdens to bear. We do all the shopping, chores, finances, etc. To write a book as a solo is a remarkable accomplishment. I hope Joan does this someday.
