Movie reviews

DIRECTOR: Ira Sachs

Can one really quantify love in a marriage? Is reaching a certain comfort level all that inconsequential? Can one say having someone through thick,thin,illness,bad mornings and upset stomachs nothing when compared to intimate conversations over candle-light dinners? Can being somebody’s need not match up to being someone else’s love?

Married Life explores the married kind of love,which is part compromise and part comfort,part affection and part affliction,part habit and part exercise. What happens when a woman,perfect in every way,walks into such a marriage? In this case,it prompts the husband Harry (Cooper),who loves wife Pat (Clarkson) dearly,to think that it would be better to kill the latter rather than putting her through the pain of divorce as he has fallen in love with the much-younger Kay (McAdams).

He goes about the job very seriously and methodically,and so convincing is he in his belief that we almost understand his reasons.

What Harry doesn’t realise is that Pat won’t be as damaged by the discovery as he thinks she would. Smouldering and sensual,while at the same time dutiful and laidback,she is also involved with someone else,and her reasons for sticking with the marriage are the same: that Harry wouldn’t be able to survive if she left.

The story is told in the words of Harry’s childhood friend Richard (Brosnan),who incidentally knows both their secrets but chooses not to “set them free” as he himself fancies Kay.

Based on a novel and set in 1949,Married Life’s strengths are its performances. It’s essential that we understand that Harry and Pat both love each other and other people. Without it,Married Life has no chance of working.

Cooper and Clarkson,both wonderful actors,manage that quite nicely. They are both comfortable and confident in their relationships,not two seniors looking for a little romance. Brosnan doesn’t have to do much except sweep Kay off her feet,and the former Mr Bond of course does a cool job of it.

McAdams is the only one who seems a little out of place in this mature set-up. She is pretty all right,but we never really get the sense of her character. What she sees in Harry is very difficult to fathom,it’s much easier to question her reasons for falling for his friend.

PRIDE and GLORY

CAST: Edward Norton,Colin Farrell,Jon Voight,Noah Emmerich

DIRECTOR: Gavin O’Connor

YES,it is yet another cop film where the cops are all dirty,corrupt and willing to bend the rules as long as it gets things done.

However,while it would be tempting to dismiss Pride and Glory as that,it would be wrong to. O’Connor,who also co-wrote the screenplay,keeps this film more about a family,almost all of whose members are cops,rather than about the police department. At one level,the conflict is about these two sets of loyalties — what comes first,family or job?

All the family members are varying shades of grey,with Norton being the son with a near-clear conscience. As four cops die during an illicit drug deal obviously involving fellow cops,they are all forced to choose how far they are ready to bend before they tumble.

There are some nice performances,especially Voight as the proud father who realises that in the fate now befalling his sons,the seeds may have been sown by him. He says he never took more than what he was paid by the government,but admits he turned a blind eye to many other things under his command. Emmerich as the older son with a dying wife,who heads the police officials involved in the illegal operations,also gives a convincing portrayal of an essentially good man who took a wrong turn,and doesn’t know how to get back.

While there are no car chases and high-octane blasts,there are some scenes of extreme physical violence and one indescribably painful one involving a child and a hot steam iron. As the character of Jimmy (Farrell) plunges from one depth to another,the film asks whether all can be swept under the carpet in the name of fighting crime. The son of a New York police official himself,O’Connor does give you a sense of what could have pushed some of them over the edge.

He also conjures up a worst-case ending that is extreme even by the standards of the New York Police Department’s well-covered underbelly. However,at a time when fake encounters,plants and cover-ups are not the privilege of the NYPD alone,it does make you sit up and wonder: can policing really come to this?

shalini.langer@expressindia.com