Brilliant performances in true-to-life drama

FILM: The Wife

CAST: Glenn Close, Jonathan Pryce, Max Irons, Annie Starke, Elizabeth McGovern, Christian Slater

DIRECTOR: Bjorn Runje RATING:

According to sociologists from America’s Bowling Green State University, the divorce rate for Americans over the age of 50 has doubled. Ever since former Us VEEP Al Gore’s wife Tipper left him after 40 years of marriage and four kids, I have wondered what it is that drives two people apart after a long history of raising kids, illness, good times. The Gores were high school sweethearts.

The Wife is based on the thought-provoking novel of the same name by Meg wolitzer. Intelligently adapted for the screen, beautifully directed and stunningly acted, the film touches on gender inequality, creativity, identity, conscience and marital conflict. Nothing fictional about that!

Director Runje employs a series of meditative flashbacks to explore the relationship between the longsuffering titular character and her conceited, but undeniably charming husband. When it begins, with a latenight telephone call from Stockholm announcing Joe Castleman’s (Jonathan Pryce) selection for the Nobel Lit Prize, the viewer believes this is one happy couple.

The wife, Joan (Glenn Close) is well, wifely; solicitous and helpful, in the best traditions of Scripture. ‘And the Lord God created a helpmate for the man from his rib...’ Having sacrificed her own dreams, she fusses over him: his medication, his meals, his wearing apparel. For Joan, it is not just Joe’s philandering ways but the ease with which he takes credit that rightfully should go to her. And I do not mean the glib remarks he makes at the formal ceremony. “I owe everything to my wife...”

Glibness comes easily to men with a sense of entitlement. Consider this statement: ‘The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world.’ Joan has suffered in silence, but will not, cannot take it any more. At the ceremonial banquet in response to a query (“who are you?”) from a fellow guest, she quips, “I am the king-maker.”

And yet, and yet, she will not spill a dark secret to the world even as David and wannabe-biographer Nathaniel Bone (Christian Slater) seem to be privy to it. The Wife is proof, if proof were needed, that behind every successful man, is a woman.