Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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29 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Unkindest Cut, December 31, 2004
Andre Dubus's novella on which this film is based can be read and interpreted a couple of ways: as an "The Ice Storm" like evisceration of 2 lonely, masochistic couples or as an "The Ice Storm" evisceration of 2 lonely masochistic couples whom Dubus shows not only understanding for but also shows that they can be saved, they can be redeemed, there is enough humanity within them to care about.
This film of "We Don't Live here Anymore" tells the story of Jack Linden (Mark Ruffalo, who just gets better and better), who is married to Terry (Laura Dern) and Hank Evans (Peter Krause) who is married to Edith (the luminous Naomi Watts).
All four have lost their way and are having affairs with the other's spouse: they have forgotten how to love and sex is now all they have to experience any kind of feeling. Their pairings are mechanical, if there is any so-called Love, it is fleeting and only of the moment. These are people who have experienced Love and found it to be lacking. They talk a lot, they fight and argue more: but all of it means nothing and seems to only be a means to pass the day without slitting their throats.
Where director Curran gets it right though is how he shows that nothing, none of the arguments leads to any kind of easy resolutions: in fact there is no resolution to any of this at all. Curran presents, I think a very contemporary and ambiguous view of his characters and of life really: it's messy, we sometimes are with the wrong people, Love mostly doesn't last but no matter what, we have options, we have hope.
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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
brilliant treatment of stallled marriages, May 28, 2005
This is one of the best films I have ever seen on what happens to many marriages: after a long time together, the partners pull away from eachother and wonder if they are still in love. Life is taken over by routine and the demands of work; frustration grows. The pain of this stage of life - when people begin to ask, "is this it?" - is vividly portrayed in this film. None of the characters are judged as they act out and seek some way to feel they are still alive, while having to take care of their kids and the banalities of house cleaning and their petty disagreements. Their dilemma is far more common than we would like to imagine.
This is very hard to watch, but its realism is quite extraordinary and shockingly intimate, with a depth vastly superior to the romantic fluff of hollywood. Even the way that the characters change in this moment of crisis is believable and all too human. Some can grow beyond it, some cannot. THere is wisdom in this truly great drama. And the acting in uniformly brilliant, approaching the complexity of real life.
Warmly recommended, but be prepared for a very rough ride.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Scenes from a modern marriage, July 20, 2005
This low-key drama confronts infidelity and marital discontent through the private dramas of two couples. Both Hank (Peter Krause) and Jack (Mark Ruffalo) are teachers at a community college, Hank an aspiring novelist who treats infidelity as a necessary adjunct to his life. The most sophisticated of the four, he embraces the romance of the writer's ancillary angst, women serving as both inspiration and gratification. His wife, Edith (Naomi Watts) is aware of Hank's indiscretions, increasingly bitter and disappointed with her marriage, but unwilling to act.
Edith and Hank are good friends with Jack and Terry (Laura Dern), socializing frequently, a source of titillation for a clandestine affair between Jack and Edith. Edith embarks on the affair partly from spite and partly from devastating loneliness, but Jack is not as cavalier as his fellow adulterer, blindsided by daydreams of his lover and irritated by Terry's obvious flaws. As Jack, Ruffalo is sensitive and thoughtful, playing the formerly faithful husband with subtle grace, sinking into a moral quagmire that renders him unable to stop the affair or leave his wife. This man enjoys the comforts of marriage, children and the routine, almost undone by the risks he is taking to meet Edith.
The jewel of the movie is Laura Dern as Terry, her performance flawless as the confused, wounded wife who senses her husband's betrayal but won't confront him, crippled by her own inadequacies. Dern and Ruffalo move in perfect counterpoint, circling their marriage, challenged in ways they never anticipated. He obsesses over the other woman and adores his children, but there is more emotional depth here than may appear. This is a man who cannot abide his own betrayal. Edith realizes that eventually the affair will be exposed, almost anticipating the ensuing confrontation.
Under the direction of John Curran, the insightful script is riveting in the hands of these actors, the subdued atmosphere belying a tight undercurrent of tension, a sense that something terrible might happen to these people, especially Jack and Terry. The director manipulates this tension to pull the characters back and forth, their interactions emotionally charged, until finally the truth of each marriage is revealed. This movie has been compared to The Ice Storm, but I never made any such connection when watching the film. The Ice Storm is cynical, a study in carelessness, but this film carries the weight of truth, how easily marriage gets side-tracked by tedium, how simple it is to forget the cost of infidelity.
Krause plays an egocentric, insensitive cad, Watts the long-suffering wife driven to her own solutions, but Dern is the heart of the movie, waxing hot and cold, caught up in her own deceptions, bruised by Jack's betrayal, both of them torn between need and responsibility. The couple is faced with the consequences of their actions, where nothing happens in a vacuum and the children pay the price of their parent's self-indulgence. There are no easy answers, no great epiphany, only hard truths and the concessions demanded by modern marriage. Luan Gaines/2005.
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