Will Glenn Close finally clinch the Oscar for ‘The Wife’?
Actress is six-time nominee for Academy Award
The Washington Post
It’s not even September, and already there’s Oscar chatter about Glenn Close’s riveting performance in “The Wife.” Adapted by writer Jane Anderson (“Olive Kitt e r i d g e ” ) from Meg Wolitzer’s 2003 novel and directed by Swedish filmmaker Bjorn Runge, the film centers on the relationship between Joe Castleman (Jonathan Pryce), a famous — and famously philandering — novelist, and his supportive yet equally secretive spouse, Joan, a thwarted writer played by Ms. Close in a performance the Guardian called “unreadably brilliant.” speech, says to me, “I have to thank you. Otherwise
Could this be the year for they’ll think I’m a narcissistic the 71-year-old Ms. Close, a a--hole.” And I say, “But six-time Oscar nominee you are.” I love that line. who has never taken home That speaks to the moment. the Academy’s top acting More to the point, I do think prize? She won’t allow herself this whole movie is really to get caught up in the risky. My daughter [Annie buzz: “I’m a Yankee,” the Starke], who’s 30, represents Connecticut-born actress a generation of says. “I don’t believe anything’s women who grew up after going to happen until the feminist movement. it happens.” The whole idea — that
The movie opens just as women should be equal — Joe is about to receive the surrounded them, the idea news that he has been that women shouldn’t have awarded the Nobel Prize in to fight for that power. So literature. It follows the Joan is a woman who stays Castlemans to Stockholm, with an abusive man. I was accompanied by their adult afraid that every young son (Max Irons), a writer woman watching the movie struggling to emerge from is going to say, “Just leave his father’s long shadow, him.” That was my fear. and Joe’s unauthorized bio That they would not be able g r a p h e r (Christian to understand the mentality, Slater), a literary sleuth or the culture, out of who’s hoping to dig up dirt which Joan’s behavior was on his elusive subject. Before coming. That was what it’s all over, long-buried Bjorn and I worked on the skeletons will be exhumed most. I had to understand and cliches overturned. that mentality for myself, to act her.
Ms. Close, who divides The question of why her time between a country women stay with their home in Westchester abusers — whether the County, New York, a small abuse is physical or psychological pied-à-terre in the West Village — is not just a and a house in Bozeman, generational problem. Mont., near three of Ms. Close: Right. The her four siblings, was in thing that was key for me, town recently with Mr. in light of the #MeToo Runge to discuss “The movement, is that, at the Wife’s” complex and provocative end of the movie, Joan does themes. get her courage up. Her anger
In a time of the has finally reached the #MeToo movement and point where she’s just beginning increasing awareness of to awaken as a full gender inequity in Hollywood, person. Before that, she’s how does this film complicit. But I’ve been speak to the current cultural there myself. I’ve been in relationships moment? where you’re in
Ms. Close: This may be a the position of wanting to little off topic, but one of my buck the other person up, at favorite lines in the film is your own expense, to keep when Joe, in prepping for him with you. It’s a tradeoff. his Nobel acceptance
Speaking of power and powerlessness, I understand that Glenn had final say-so on hiring the director for this film. Can you tell me how that worked?
Mr. Runge: Yes, I got the script from one of the producers, Meta Louise Foldager, that I had been working with in Copenhagen. I read it, and I said, “This is absolutely wonderful.” And then the producer said, “We want you to do this. Now it’s just up to Glenn Close to say yes or no to you.”
Isn’t that kind of power unusual for a woman in Hollywood?
Ms. Close: I don’t know. In the independent film world, I don’t think it’s that unusual, because a lot of times, they’ll hang a whole film on an actor, and they hope that other people will come because they want to work with them. I do a lot of independent films. My definition of an independent film is a film that almost doesn’t get made. This screenplay had been floating around for more than 14 years. So our meeting was important. We met around the corner from my little Village apartment, at Cafe Cluny. We just talked.
Mr. Runge: Yeah, we talked.
Did you say something special to convince her?
Mr. Runge: I was very surprised, because in addition to talking about the script, we were just talking about life, about theater and film. Suddenly, I remember Glenn was just looking at me. And now I understand, looking back, that this was the moment. There was a beat — and not only a beat, but like this hairpin silence — and suddenly she said, “I want you to direct this film.” From there, we started our collaboration.
Ms. Close: It was just a blink reaction, almost instinctual. It was mostly the way you talked about it, and the chemistry.
The nature of collaboration — and complicity — is another of the film’s themes. Does the suspension of this year’s Nobel Prize for literature, after accusations of sexual misconduct, add unintended subtext to “The Wife”?
Mr. Runge: In Sweden, we have a name for a special type of man: the “Culture Man.” He is often a man of great power who attracts people and who uses that power. In the Swedish Academy right now, they are having a great crisis, because this year, they won’t give out any award for literature — the first time since World War II.
Ms. Close: It adds a very timely quality to the film.
Mr. Runge: This crisis of power within the group has to do with access, with #MeToo, with the power between people. Ms. Close: Sexual power. Mr. Runge: ... and the culture of silence. It adds so many extra ingredients to our story, it’s almost Shakespearean. Joe Castleman, who tries to come on to the pretty young photographer, is a classic Culture Man.
When Joe is asked to critique the plot of his son’s first short story, he offers a harsh assessment that contains an implicit critique of the film’s plot: “The blowhard husband, the stoic wife with the repressed rage — I don’t buy it. It’s a cliche.” And yet while that capsule description neatly sums up “The Wife,” the film scrupulously avoids those very cliches. As an actor, and as a director, doesn’t this make things so much harder?
Ms. Close: Yes. The scene where Joe is having a heart attack was one of the hardest things, because Joe asks me, “Do you love me?” right after I’ve just told him, “I’m going to leave you.” I remember I stopped and turned to Bjorn and said, “Does he have to say that?”
Mr. Runge: And then, after she says yes, Joe says, “You’re such a good liar. How will I ever know?”
Ms. Close: They’ve been lying to each other their whole lives.
Joan is also lying through her teeth in her big scene with Christian Slater, where his character is trying to weasel information out of her about Joe. Watching the two of you play cat-andmouse, I couldn’t help thinking of this line from a review of your performance in the FX series “Damages”: “There is no actor alive or dead as scary as a smiling Glenn Close.”
Ms. Close: [Laughing] I love that scene, because it was all a mind game.
You once said that you’ve always felt like an outsider looking in. What did you mean?
Ms. Close: I’m an introvert. I read the book “Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking.” I don’t naturally gravitate toward social situations. I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about where I stand on the Hollywood ladder. Maybe it’s because I’ve never spent time there. I’ve always been someone who spends a lot of time in their head. Acting, for me, is thought.