A simple yet complex film about choices in life, in love and in a co-dependent marriage.
Joe and Joan Castleman (Jonathan Pryce and Glenn Close respectively) are an elderly couple asleep in their Connecticut home when the phone rings. It’s a gentleman calling from Stockholm, Sweden, ringing to inform Mr. Castleman that’s he’s just won the Nobel Prize for Distinction in Literature. Bravo! Celebration all around as the couple jumps on the bed.
Castleman is already adored, pampered by the press, his ego now escalating to new heights as he’s informed that his prose inspire the world, thus effecting students for generations to come. He’s even beaten out Bill Clinton for this Sunday’s Times Book Review. Castleman is being called the “Greatest living author of the 20th Century” while she is simply called ‘the Wife.’
Close portrays more his ‘handler’ then spouse. Giving attention to his cookie intake, his oral hygiene, his forgetfulness, and so on, something lurks deeper. She’s angry…and anger often translates to fear…
Apparently back at Smith College, circa 1958, her Professor was (Mr. Castleman) became her affair that grew to be her husband…thus the Cattleman’s long wedded um, bliss. She was his English student. And by George, she would write!
Glenn Close is sublime, embracing her senior acting years with her cropped silver hair, sagging jaw and age spots. It’s the stuff of autheticity. This is a far cry from the days of the sex-luring and twisted mistress of Fatal Attraction. Yet, the youth of her playful, albeit, pained blue eyes hold the key to another Oscar-worthy caliber. The stillness of her expression reveals silent pain..her knowledge deep, her sacrifice deeper….as we the viewer see into a soul that delivers us so to understand so much more.
Nathaniel Bone (Christian Slater) challenges that pain, attempting to tap into ‘the wife’ over cocktails in Sweden, where he informs the family that his publisher has hired him to pen the biography of Joe Castleman.
On the other hand, Castleman’s son, David (Max Irons) harbors the pain of living in his father’s greatness. He too longs to write, but his father won’t even give him a read. But great writers have to occupy their space for themselves. The flip side suggests that an artist need to be left to his own devices, and given emotional space to create. It’s not selfish, it’s not narcissism, it’s called art.
But god knows writers – the good and the bad – need to be read.
A true writer, a true artist, puts his work and words above all else. A writer writes because his soul will otherwise starve. If a writer had six months left to live, the writer would type faster. Writers have low expectations of the material world and high expectations of their inner creative source. And that’s where one thinks the movie fails. Castleman introduces Mrs. Castleman, his wife, as the love of his life, but what does that mean? Why aren’t his award speeches giving her all the credit? And if so, why is she still so miserable? Being a Muse to an artist is not the end of the world. Unless of course it’s Nelly Ternan to Charles Dickens who abused her beyond measure. But in this case, can’t the long-suffering wife embrace – for lack of a better word – the luxury that comes with servicing one of the world’s greatest minds? Or does his infidelities draw a line of what’s to be tolerated?
Sylvia Plath shared a soulmate marriage to Ted Hughes, only to find herself living in his written shadow and affairs, until her own fame posthumously.
As the Castleman’s co-dependent marriage unravels, we grow to adore the wife’s misery. Perhaps it’s in that pain she finds her ability to scribe her sadness, the way rain creates drama but sunshine creates pressure to be ‘on.’ She was (in her day) a writer at university, too. Now ‘the Wife’ is invisible. Turns out she may be more along the lines of ‘Colette.’
Brush up on your literature and the ongoing antics of Masters of the Universe. And you’ll understand that ‘The Wife’ might be called ‘The Husband’ in all its genius complexities.