Video review: "The Wife"

I hope and believe Glenn Close will win an Academy Award for her superlative performance in “The Wife.” That’s because a) she’s been nominated six times without winning; b) it would be a welcome career-capper for an actress who, at almost 72, probably isn’t going to get many more shots; but mostly c) because she so richly deserves it.

She masterfully plays Joan Castleman, a promising writer who gave up her career to raise a family with her husband, Joe (Jonathan Pryce). As the story opens they are edging into their golden years, seemingly happy and about to welcome their first grandchild. Joe, a respected novelist, receives a phone call tell him he is to be awarded the Nobel Prize in literature.

As they fly off to Sweden for the ceremony, cracks in their tranquil façade appear. There are flashbacks to their young lives decades earlier (played by Annie Starke and Harry Lloyd) when we see things weren’t going so well. Joan wasn’t taken seriously by a patriarchal publishing industry, and Joe’s early drafts floundered. They fought and knew anguish.

Problems that started then will come back to haunt Joan in the modern setting… but also liberate her. Close is so good because it’s the epitome of an inside/outside performance. Joan is putting on a face for the world -- a lie, if you will -- and it’s one she’s become very good at maintaining. At the same time, we sense that she has grown tired of this mask and is ready to cast it off.

It’s a brilliant performance inside another performance.

As much as I admire the other lead actress performances vying for awards -- Melissa McCarthy, Lady Gaga -- Close is head and shoulders above the rest.

Bonus features are rather modest. There is a Q&A session with Close and author Meg Wolitzer, who wrote the book upon which the movie is based. Plus a conversation with all of the leading cast members, and a making-of documentary short, “Keeping Secrets: Glenn Close on The Wife.”

Movie:

Extras:

Review: "The Wife"

All married couples hold secrets -- sometimes between each other, sometimes together. Most are lies of omission: not telling a sister about what happened to the flood insurance money, or sparing your spouse’s feelings about the actual edibleness of their bunt cake.

The Castlemans have their own trove of secrets. But with them it seems their entire marriage is built on layer upon layer of secrets, like an onion that smells sweet but is foul inside.

Outwardly, they are bright, successful people reaping the benefits of a life of good work as they edge into their golden years, with accolades, prospering children and a first grandchild on the way. Joe (Jonathan Pryce) is forever announcing to anyone who cares to listen that his wife, Joan, is the love of his life -- his muse, his inspiration, his bedrock.

The interior of their relationship, though, is shot through with rot.

This is a career watershed for Glenn Close. As Joan, she plays a woman who has chosen to live a life of deception, which has with the passing of time become self-deceit. This is the story of her coming to the conclusion that she can no longer live a lie. It’s one of the finest performances of her storied career.

As the story opens, Joe has just been informed that he is to receive the Nobel Prize for literature. After an early disgrace at Yale -- he was sacked for sleeping with one of his students, which would be Joan -- he’s become a respected novelist with a bookshelf full of works that have been translated into innumerable languages.

The story follows them on their journey to Sweden to receive the award, which should be the apex of their marriage but in fact marks the point of its unraveling. Close and Pryce are so good together, with all the little quirks and understanding of each other’s idiosyncrasies that come from decades spent living together.

They play their roles for the public eye. Joe is the egotistical, philandering, fragile artist who must always be the center of attention. Joan is the long-suffering wife whose job is to support Joe in his and bear his many indiscretions. She was a promising writer herself in her youth, but tucked her ambitions away in the face of a male-dominated publishing world.

Close’s face is often set in a placid state of benevolence, with a little tightness at the corner of the mouth and eyes that lets us know it’s a mask -- one Joan is ready to let fall.

Their son, David (Max Irons), accompanies them on the trip and is witness to the growing storm. A budding writer himself, he resents that his father has never given him any sort of encouragement -- only critiques and dismissive praise.

Christian Slater plays Nathaniel Bone, a sniveling fellow shadowing the Castlemans because he wants to be anointed as Joe’s official biographer. He’s an endless parade of flattery and toadying, and yet it becomes clear the man is not a dolt.

Annie Starke and Harry Lloyd portray Joan and Joe as their younger selves. Joe was already married and had a daughter when they met as professor and student, but chucked it all away to dally with her. After he’s dismissed from teaching, the first draft of his debut novel, “The Walnut,” turns out poorly. Joan, who works as a secretary in a publishing house, offers to help get him noticed… and in other ways.

In a way, “The Wife” is a whodunit as well as a portrait of marriage. It soon becomes clear that their relationship is doomed, and the filmmakers -- director Björn Runge and screenwriter Jane Anderson, who adapted Meg Wolitzer’s novel -- tease us with drips of information about how it all went wrong.

I won’t give away the ending of this wonderful movie, other than to say it concludes with bitterness and regret but also a fair amount of joy and hope. Sometimes letting go of the past is the only way to open up new possibilities.

Review: "The Theory of Everything"

“The Theory of Everything” seemingly falls into the category of what I call “Great Man” movies, which are biopics of historically notable people that attempt to take you behind the public persona and get at the living person behind the façade. “Ray,” “Capote,” “The Iron Lady” are recent examples.

I generally relish these movies, though it seems like there’s a built-in ceiling on how good they can be. They’re usually anchored by an amazing, Oscar-caliber performance that dominates so much it tends to suck all the air out of the film. It becomes a showcase rather than a story.

“The Theory of Everything” has many aspects of the Great Man genre, including a turn by Eddie Redmayne as physicist Stephen Hawking that is sure to generate a lot of talk come Oscar balloting. It’s full of a lot of “behavior,” but also plenty of soulfulness.

But the film is also about Hawking’s relationship with his first wife, Jane Hawking, and how they navigated their romantic lives around his crippling ALS (aka Lou Gehrig’s Disease), which left him confined to a wheelchair at a young age and eventually unable to speak. That’s not surprising, considering this movie is based on Jane’s book about their relationship, adapted for the screen by Anthony McCarten.

Felicity Jones plays Jane, and if she’s not exactly Stephen’s co-equal in the film’s narrative focus, she at least holds her own in her scenes with Redmayne. Together they draw a portrait of love and sacrifice, of limitations both physical and emotional.

This is not so much “the Stephen Hawking story” as the story of the Hawkings.

Director James Marsh has toddled back and forth between documentaries (including the Academy Award-winning “Man on Wire”) and narrative features, and brings a sensibility of observation without trying to strong-arm the story into places where he might want it to go.

He focuses most of his attention on the early part of the Hawkings’ lives, starting when Stephen was a gangly British doctoral physics student who fell in love with Jane, a lover of languages. Even then, Stephen’s physical ticks hint at trouble to come, such as his scrabbly chalkboard writing of equations or the pigeon-toed walk that sometimes barely keeps him upright.

Harry Lloyd and David Thewlis are spot-on in smallish, tidy roles’ as Stephen’s gregarious best friend and mentor, respectively. Emily Watson is used poorly in a cameo as his mother; I suspect her part got cut down during editing.

Marsh and McCarten don’t get too deep into the woods of Hawking’s theories about black holes and the beginning of the universe, focusing more on the poetic aspects that work cinematically rather than the nuts-and-bolts of the actual theorems. It’s probably a wise move, but they stay so far away from the specifics of what made Hawking world-famous that it saps the character’s integrity -- we know he’s important because we’re told he is.

There are some bleak and beautiful scenes in “Everything” as we witness Stephen’s descent into disability, even as his mind reaches for the heavens.

I particularly liked the moment where he, having gotten around for years on a pair of canes, agrees to use a wheelchair. “It’s just temporary,” he stammers out in his warped speech, smiling at the lie he and his spouse have shared. There’s also the scene where he first uses the voice synthesizer that became Hawking’s trademark, joking that people will assume he’s American.

With three children and acclaim descending upon Stephen, they would seem to have all the ingredients for happiness. But the film shows how a life of total selflessness wears upon Jane, a burden she has taken on willingly but comes to resent. When a friendly face appears to help out, in the form of her choir director Jonathan (Charlie Cox), she’s relieved.

Soon he’s incorporated into the family unit like a brother/uncle, and it becomes clear Jonathan and Jane share feelings for each other. Stephen, alert and observant, understands the dynamic and, through his passivity, essentially blesses it. What might seem odd or even perverse to some is rendered into unremarkable normalcy.

Most of the attention for “The Theory of Everything” will focus on the particulars of Stephen Hawking’s condition, and his bravery in rising above it. The real story, though, is about how one loves a great person who is not necessarily capable of fulling returning it, which is deeper and more interesting.

Video review: "The Iron Lady"

With a lot of biopics I see starring a tremendous actor in an Oscar-worthy turn, the performance often trumps the movie around it.

Movie stars by their definition get the most screen time and the best lines of dialogue. But when it's a film about a historical figure, with lots of big events and emotions, oftentimes the performer can be so dominant that the story can't get any air. Think Philip Seymour Hoffman in "Capote" or Jamie Foxx in "Ray."

"The Iron Lady" follows in this tradition, featuring Meryl Streep in a role so meaty -- as seminal British prime minister Margaret Thatcher -- that the rest of the movie occasionally turns to mush.

Streep is so good, she carries the picture during the insipid stretches, such as when she's battling her government underlings like a schoolmarm fussing at some ill-behaved boys in knee pants.

The film reaches a brighter note when Thatcher is communing with the spirit of her deceased husband, Denis (Jim Broadbent). It's not delusion; they both acknowledge that he's dead. It's just that neither one wants to lose whatever argument they're currently having.

In the end, "The Iron Lady" is worth watching just to see the way Streep nails the iconic Thatcher, from that swoop of sprayed hair to the commanding screech of a voice. There's greatness in that performance, if not the movie that contains it.

Video extras are fairly minimalist, and are the same for both DVD and Blu-ray editions.

There's a making-of featurette and four mini-featurettes: “Recreating the Young Margaret Thatcher,” “Battle in the House of Commons,” “Costume Design: Pearls and Power Suits,” and “Denis: The Man Behind the Woman.”

Call me old-fashioned, but I think the real Margaret Thatcher would deem this video release as lacking proper ambition.

Movie: 3 stars out of four
Extras: 2 stars

Review: "The Iron Lady"

"The Iron Lady" is a fairly standard biopic containing an extraordinary performance. That it is by Meryl Streep is not surprising; I'd say she has made a career resurgence in her 50s and early 60s, except she never really experienced a lull. Streep arguably occupies the place where Morgan Freeman sat 15 years ago: America's greatest living film actor.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science might as well give her a nomination now. This would be her 17th Oscar nod, a number so astounding its impact is dwarfed only by the fact that her last win was in 1983, for "Sophie's Choice."

Based on her riveting, spot-on turn as British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, I'd say her dry spell for taking home golden statues may well come to an end.

I often feel that with movies of this sort, containing a performance that is so dominating and full-bodied, the film around it tends to suffer. Like Jamie Foxx in "Ray" or Philip Seymour Hoffman in "Capote," Streep's gravitational pull is so powerful, story arcs and secondary characters tend to get sucked into the vortex.

Only Jim Broadbent, giving his own golden-caliber turn as Thatcher's long-suffering husband Denis, is given time to add more than perfunctory notes.

Most films about politicians tend to shy away from the politics -- especially when they don't sync up with Hollywood's leftist tilt. Director Phyllida Lloyd and screenwriter Abi Morgan make the bold and I think proper choice to put Thatcher's Conservative party ideals front and center to the story.

The movie isn't a diatribe for right-wing political conclusions, but shows how Thatcher's self-reliant upbringing and tendency to demand the best of those around her colored her way of thinking. In an age awash in self-reflection and where the slacker mentality is idolized, this portrait of the vinegary Thatcher and her stern exhortations has a sort of bracing throw-back freshness.

"It used to be about trying to do something," an elderly Thatcher complains to an admirer. "Now it's about trying to be someone."

The story unspools with old, doddering Thatcher reflecting on her life in flashback. Alexandra Roach plays young Thatcher, a grocer's daughter who ran for Parliament at age 24 (and lost). Over time, though, she gains standing until she believes it's time to run for leader of her party -- not because she thinks she can win, but because she wants to bolster ideals she believes have grown flabby.

In the modern sections, Denis Thatcher has long been dead, but Margaret still talks to him (raising great concern on the part of her handlers). On a conscious level, she knows he's not there, but her soul so aches for his companionship that she refuses to dismiss his apparition.

Ever the chameleon, Streep is made up to resemble Thatcher rather closely, including that famous swoop of helmet hair. She gets the iconic voice just right, a squeaky goose's honk that she employed to scold and argue her point. Once scene, showing her receiving vocal training in preparation for her national campaign, has (deliberate?) similarities to last year's "The King's Speech."

I thoroughly enjoyed "The Iron Lady," or more rather I enjoyed watching Streep embody Margaret Thatcher with a convincing mix of steel and velvet. This is a movie that contains greatness, though it never quite reaches it.

3 stars out of four