If it’s good enough for Henry VIII, it’s good enough for anyone — Married Life considers murder as an alternative to divorce
Married Life asks an intriguing question: in 1950s American suburbia, is it better to put a devoted spouse through the anguish and humiliation of a divorce, or, as in the words of Harry Allen (Chris Cooper), gift them with the “blessed release” of a painless murder by poison? With beautifully jumbled reference points veering between the tribulations of film noir and Douglas Sirk melodramatics, the questions raised in Married Life don’t find any easy answers — above all else, isn’t a man (not to mention his wife) entitled to true happiness and comfort?
Narrated by Allen’s closest friend and confidant Richard Langley (Pierce Brosnan), the film’s opening love triangle turns square with the arrival of the enchanting Kay Nesbitt (Rachel McAdams). Surely there can be no real fault in the pursuit of one’s closest friend’s mistress — the relationships involved already built on such flimsy foundations of adultery and mounting white lies. As each layer is pulled away, each character reveals secrets and infidelities they’ve kept under wraps in the name of the film’s titular promise of “in sickness and in health, until death do we part.”
Married Life succeeds when it keeps tensions twisting high, utilizing coincidental close calls and the sly sense of humour so prevalent in the best film noir tragedies. There’s always someone knocking on the door at the wrong time, always someone entering the room at an inopportune moment. That it’s pulled off with any effectiveness, however, comes thanks to the patient, un-flashy keel with which director Ira Sachs keeps things moving in perfect tandem with his script, co-written with Oren Moverman (and based on the novel Five Roundabouts to Heaven by John Bingham).
While both Cooper and Brosnan play their parts with unassuming focus, Patricia Clarkson (as the pesky, loving wife standing between Harry and Kay) pulls off the finest of minimalist flourishes — the anguish in a knowing smile, the hidden pain in going through the motions of marriage.
Between concept and execution, Married Life isn’t quite a match made in heaven. Some angles are a little too pat, some revelations and twists a little too simplified. Within the confines of a somewhat surprising denouement (this is still an American film, mind, touted up as a passionate thriller), it flies in the face of convention, finding at least one way to, in the oft-repeated line of dialogue that passes from the lips of more than one character in the film, “build happiness upon the unhappiness of someone else.”
