I see one movie a week in theaters without fail since the first week of 2014. So I get to see most of the things I want to and feel apart of the conversation. Then there are weeks where I’m seeing something I have no real interest in. I’ll usually go to these alone and on a whim. More often then not I’m taken be these experiences. Earlier this year I saw Tully and it kinda floored me, I mean I was thinking about it for weeks, and of course, nobody saw it making it hard for me to unpack my thoughts on it.
The Wife is not officially released in the United States until August 18th so there haven’t been many reviews. While the reviews I glanced were generally positive most of them disregarded the core cast apart from Glen Close. This film is about Glen Close’s character, but it doesn’t mean she has any more screen time then her co-star, Jonathan Pryce. The Wife is the story of an award-winning writer, Joe Castleman finding out he is being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. While the focus is on Joe, it is his wife, Joan Castleman with whom we see constantly in the background watching Joe only paces ahead, yet always ahead of her. The relationship becomes understood throughout the film as to why she has taken the back seat to his acclaim. It’s the portrait of Joan that makes this simple film engaging. However, it is Joe who is the more interesting character to me, as I found the more we learn about their relationship the more my initial feelings for Joe changed over the course of the film.
The Wife is a movie you would really enjoy if you are a fan of biopics like me. By the end of the film, I was convinced this was based on a true story. I quickly googled it as I exited the theater, only to find it was taken from a novel. It did specific things that made it remarkable by how much I believed it to be a true story. The secrets that are unearthed by the end are not unexpected, though they are executed very well. The ending was a mute one for me, that seemed too convenient for me. I hope there is some awards chatter for The Wife at the end of the year so more people will check it out. Currently, I would place it in my top three of 2018.
Robert Ring
KissTheMovies 