The Wife: The Woman Behind the Man

Last week, Glenn Close won a Golden Globe for Best Actress - Drama for her work in The Wife. No one seemed to begrudge her this award and all critics were raving about the performance, so I dragged myself to the theater to watch it. Boy am I glad I did.

Glenn Close plays Joan Castleman, the wife of a celebrated American novelist, Joseph Castleman (Jonathan Pryce, who is equally remarkable in this role, the perfect foil to Close). Set in 1992, the movie opens with Joe receiving a phone call from the Nobel Committee to inform him that he has won the Nobel Prize in Literature. He and Joan celebrate and head off to Sweden for the prize ceremony. As the movie proceeds, Joe is bombastic and thrilled with this honor, but Joan is increasingly reserved and troubled, going so far as to beg him not to thank her in his acceptance speech. She presents a diplomatic and calm face to the public, but when she is alone, we can see that all is not well.

The movie includes flashbacks to how Joan and Joe met - he was her writing professor at Smith College in 1958 (shout out to my Seven Sisters alums!) and married with a child. He embarked on an affair with Joan, got divorced, and the two of them moved to the Village, where Joan helped kickstart his literary career by working at a publishing house and delivering his manuscript to the right people at the right time. Of note, young Joan is played by Annie Starke, who is Glenn Close's actual daughter, which helps explain why I was so impressed at how they managed to find a woman who looked so like Close. Harry Lloyd, who plays young Joe, is far too good-looking, and neither actor can really hold a candle to Close and Pryce (obviously a high bar to clear), so I preferred to treat the flashbacks as necessary for exposition but not for any acting revelations.

I won't give away more details, because this movie unravels slowly, quietly and then dramatically revealing the cause of Joan's angst. In our #MeToo era, this is the perfect film about how women set aside their ambitions for the men in their lives or find themselves dismissed by the male establishment. Joan's literary ambitions are thwarted by male critics and publishing houses finding it difficult to take female novelists seriously, and Joe's behavior in their marriage is appalling but constantly dismissed as acceptable male hi-jinks. Watching Glenn Close slowly seethe and reach her breaking point is a true joy, and it's no wonder she's a major awards contender this year.

The screenplay was adapted by Jane Anderson from the novel of the same name by Meg Wolitzer. But the movie is directed by a man, Swedish filmmaker, Bjorn Runge, which struck me as a bit odd. I could see his influence in the attention to Scandinavian detail around the Nobel goings-on, but I couldn't help wondering what this movie would be like if directed by a woman. The Glenn Close performance is magnificent, but Pryce dominates so many of the scenes. Of course, the argument could be made  that the movie reflects their actual relationship - she is quiet and retiring, while he is loud and acts like the world owes him everything. But we could have discovered even more about Joan, probed her psyche even further, and truly felt her pain over the years she spent in service to her husband. Ultimately, The Wife falls short on character development, relying more on the twisty plot to keep the audience engaged, and Glenn Close does all the work to ensure this character truly comes alive. I suppose it's the ultimate irony that she has to carry the film, and much like Joan Castleman, transform it from a mediocre piece of art to something sublime.