The Wife, directed by Björn Runge, is a movie about assumptions of genius. Set in 1992, the film begins in the marital bed of Joan (Glenn Close) and Joe Castleman (Jonathan Pryce) in the hours before the Nobel committee will announce its annual awards. The expectation is that Joe will receive the Nobel Prize in Literature. His contribution to the canon has been as revolutionary as it is prolific and the possibility of the honor is keeping him awake. Joan sleeps easily until Joe wakes her seeking company during his anticipation. She gently chastises him for a fatty, late-night snack, there’s a little sex and finally they drift off until the call comes. Joe has won the prize, but his immortalization as the Great American Novelist has only begun.
The Castlemans and their adult son, David (Max Irons), a smoking, aspiring writer heaped in the grunge aesthetic of the period, head to Stockholm for the ceremony where they are stalked by Joe’s would-be biographer, Nathaniel Bone (Christian Slater). Despite rebukes from Joe, Nathaniel has done his research and has come to a conclusion: the story of Joe Castleman is much more interesting and complicated than the simple great man mythology would allow it to be. He plans on telling that story with or without his subject’s approval and his search for confirmation gives the film the slight propulsion it needs. This is essentially a character study and the one with the secret is the one in the title.
Adapted by Jane Anderson from the novel by Meg Wolitzer, the story of the Castlemans is told at its conclusion with Close and Pryce and at its beginning with Annie Starke and Harry Lloyd playing young Joan and Joe in the 50s and 60s. Their relationship began as student and teacher. Joan sat in Joe’s class, listening to him drone on about how writers must write. In one-on-one sessions he critiques her work, but it is difficult to assess whether the promise he says she shows is a product of their flirtation or something more genuine. He is a married professor with a young child, and their courtship begins as an infidelity. Joan will not be Joe’s last lover, but she will be his last wife.
Anderson and Runge reverse-engineer the tale of the Castlemans through Joan as played by Close. She endures casual sexism from her husband’s fellow Nobel laureates, a talent she honed while working in a publishing house in the 60s and, more generally, living as a woman. Joe offhandedly slights her to others while publically lauding her during speeches. They shout at each other in their hotel room in Sweden, reliving the same fight they had in Brooklyn as poor, unpublished writers decades earlier. But there is something more to Joan. At the apex of her husband’s career, a career she sacrificed everything of herself to create, she experiences no joy. The secret she carries makes it impossible.
Ironically, given that one of the matters under scrutiny here is the fallibility of awards and proclamations of genius, this is a movie made to win awards and Close and Pryce bring all their craft and talent to the Castlemans. There are, of course, parallels between the characters and the actors playing them, both stalwarts whose long careers helped define a generation of film and have neared the point of lifetime achievement status. Pryce’s typical excellence should not be dismissed nonchalantly, but it really is Close’s movie. She simmers in silent close-ups, her repressed fury playing across subtle changes of expression while the world goes on around her. In a movie about the underestimation of women, Close is saying “Remember me?” to an industry that disposes of half its great actors once the bloom of youth has ended. Yes, awards may be trivial, but Glenn Close deserves to be considered for every one for her work here.
And so, surprisingly, does Christian Slater. Apparently, he works best in the 90s, because he has given his finest performance in decades in a film set around the time of peak Christian Slater. His Nathaniel Bone is a smirking, sinister presence throughout the film, basically his character from Heathers but with a doctorate that precluded his need for violence. He is paired mostly with Close, and it is in those scenes that Joan’s veneer blemishes a bit and we see more of who she wishes she was.
This is a movie for fans of heavyweight bouts with Close and Pryce laying it out for an hour and 40 minutes. It is a movie that will make you think about your own marriage and what you will do to make it last.
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