Glenn Close and Jonathan Pryce in The Wife. Close has deservedly received her seventh Best Actor nomination for the role, writes Alan Charlton. (Sony Pictures Classics)
For most people, the Academy Awards of greatest interest are those for Best Movie, Best Director, and Best Leading and Supporting Performances. The odd thing about those awards is that they can go to actors who appear in films which, otherwise, lack great merit. So it is that the Best Actor award is likely to go to Rami Malek for his depiction of Freddy Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody, even though the film has received only lukewarm critical support.
Although the movie The Wife has fared considerably better in the area of critical approval, there is every probability that Glenn Close will receive the Best Actor award for her depiction of the eponymous The Wife. There is one rather unsupportable reason for this: Ms. Close has been nominated already six times for the award, but has yet actually to receive it.
The Academy can be motivated by sentiment, as was proved when Elizabeth Taylor received an Oscar for Butterfield 8 after surviving a severe illness, even though she had been overlooked for better performances in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Suddenly Last Summer. Fortunately, her later performance in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was clearly and truly award worthy.
Movie-goers have seen Ms. Close turn in several award-winning performances, even though she was not recognized; the sad thing is that, while excellent, her performance in The Wife is really not her greatest performance, while the film itself is deeply flawed. Indeed, it is the quality of the acting, rather than other components of the film which have been the cause of the critical approval that it has received.
The Wife, based on the 2003 novel by Meg Wolitzer, tells the story of a writer, Joe Castleman (Jonathan Pryce) who has been awarded the Nobel prize for literature. It depicts his marriage to a former student, Joan (Glenn Close), at Smith College, where he was an instructor in a writing class. From the outset, it is clear that Joan’s life has been dedicated to making that of her husband easy and worry free.
The idea that behind every successful man there is a strong and supportive woman is something of a literary cliché; in fact, late in the movie, one of the characters recognizes it as such. That a woman should become the meek helpmate and self-denying supporter of her husband is, of course, not likely to meet with much approval today in the age of the #MeToo movement, though in fact it is set in 1992 when such a view might have been more acceptable.
This trope many will find annoying, especially when, as in the movie, the wife is portrayed as charming, warm, and caring, while her husband is not only self-centred and egotistical, but also licentious. However, even if one accepts that such a marriage is likely, as the film unwinds, it becomes less and less convincing, ultimately rising to a big reveal which explodes almost out of nowhere and defies any credibility. The characters would simply not have lived this way – especially the intelligent and admirable wife. It would be difficult to come up with a less-likely scenario than that which is presented – and certainly not on the basis of the nature of such a woman.
It should also be noted that the film opens with an entirely redundant and egregious sex scene between husband and wife and contains several examples of objectionable language, but its biggest fault is that in the end it posits a scenario which is downright unconvincing.
At several points, awkwardly directed by Bjorn Runge, The Wife has merit mainly because of the strength of its two leading actors, though Annie Starke as the young Joan Castleman hits all the right notes. However, the fact is that Glenn Close has deservedly been nominated for an Oscar for her subtle, beautifully rendered portrait of a woman who has denied her own life to the service of an undeserving husband.
It’s an excellent portrait – but by no means her best, which does not mean that she won’t win on Oscar night – indeed, she probably will. After all, there is her body of work to justify such an award, and at 71 she deserves the recognition.