Tags: murder love divorce murder plot treachery film noir period drama 1940s infidelity romance
Average Rating 
Married LifeA strong blend of suspense, star-crossed romance and wry comedy of manners, Married Life is an unconventional human drama about the irresistible power and utter madness of love. Harry (Chris Cooper) decides he must kill his wife Pat (Patricia Clarkson) because he loves her too much to let her suffer when he leaves her. Harry and his much younger girlfriend Kay (Rachel McAdams) are head over heels in love but his best friend Richard (Pierce Brosnan) wants to win Kay for himself. As Harry implements his awkward plan for murdering his wife, the other characters are occupied with their own deceptions. Like Harry, they are overwhelmed by their passions, but still struggle to avoid hurting others. Married Life is an uncommonly adult film that surprises and confounds expectations. While it plays with mystery and intrigue, its ultimate concern is: What is Married Life? In its sly way, Married Life poses perceptive questions about the seasonal discontents and unforeseen joys of of all long-term relationships.
Married LifeA strong blend of suspense, star-crossed romance and wry comedy of manners, Married Life is an unconventional human drama about the irresistible power and utter madness of love. Harry (Chris Cooper) decides he must kill his wife Pat (Patricia Clarkson) because he loves her too much to let her suffer when he leaves her. Harry and his much younger girlfriend Kay (Rachel McAdams) are head over heels in love but his best friend Richard (Pierce Brosnan) wants to win Kay for himself. As Harry implements his awkward plan for murdering his wife, the other characters are occupied with their own deceptions. Like Harry, they are overwhelmed by their passions, but still struggle to avoid hurting others. Married Life is an uncommonly adult film that surprises and confounds expectations. While it plays with mystery and intrigue, its ultimate concern is: What is Married Life? In its sly way, Married Life poses perceptive questions about the seasonal discontents and unforeseen joys of of all long-term relationships.Far too many period productions look right, but feel wrong. Set in 1949, Married Life doesn’t just bring the post-war era to vivid life with cigarettes and cocktails aplenty; it even plays like a product of the time. In that respect, it calls to mind AMC’s Mad Men, except Ira Sachs (Forty Shades of Blue) takes a lighter tone towards domestic disharmony. In this well-scrubbed suburban world, middle-class wives, like Pat (Patricia Clarkson), build their lives around their husbands. Pat and Harry (Chris Cooper) seem happy, but Harry confesses to his pal, Richard (narrator Pierce Brosnan), that the spark is gone. He plans to leave Pat for vibrant young war widow Kay (Rachel McAdams in a role that recalls The Notebook). Once Richard, a notorious ladies man, gets a gander at the platinum blonde, he secretly sets out to win her affections, while Harry plots to take Pat out of the picture. Married Life almost simulates one of Alfred Hitchcock’s pessimistic disquisitions on matrimony, yet Harry and Richard seek less hurtful means to achieve their goals. Though women’s lib has yet to hit the suburbs, Pat and Kay harbor desires of their own, and the best-laid plans soon go awry. Though Kay could use further development, this ensemble hums along almost as harmoniously as the quartet in Starting Out in the Evening. Along with co-writer Oren Moverman (I’m Not There), Sachs transforms John Bingham’s 1953 novel, Five Roundabouts to Heaven, into an insightful treatise on love, marriage, and fidelity. –Kathleen C. Fennessy
- amazon.com Sales Rank: #2192 in DVD
- Sony ABIS_DVD
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Middleweight period-piece drama by David F. Nolan 
I rented this on a whim, in part because I’d read that it resembles a Hitchcock movie. It doesn’t, really, but it’s a decent little drama that captures the look and feel of a bygone era almost perfectly. It’s not really a thriller, or a comedy, or even a heavyweight drama. It’s more of a character study, with a couple of suspenseful scenes along the way. I enjoyed it, but it’s pretty forgettable. This movie reminded me in some ways of Todd Haynes’ “Far from Heaven.” If you liked that, you’ll probably like “Married Life,” and vice-versa.
Very well done 50’s era melodrama. by kittykins
Reminded me of “all that heaven allows” with Randy Quaid a recent 50’s style movie, with a little more dramatic story. But, this captured the quietness of the 50’s were one could actually think without all the electric noise frying our brain waves.
The story is pretty simple, husband thinks his younger mistress is the woman he should be with, so, in order not to embarrass his wife by asking for a divorce he plans to murder her. Meanwhile, husband introduces mistress to his best friend, a handsome bachelor, bachelor falls for mistress, mistress falls for bachelor. Bachelor starts manipulating husband and wife so he can have the mistress. In the end, wife and husband find they really love each other and bachelor and mistress get married. I always enjoyed the original movies in the 50’s with Lana Turner “Peyton Place” and Susan Heywood with their quiet desperation and long term suffering, and they did it with dignity and class.
True, they weren’t great movies, but, they showed that woman can be strong without resorting to the lowest common denominator, like young woman do today, showing everything, with language that would embarrass a drunken sailor. I think a lot of this generation of young woman took the “woman’s lib” concept, way out of context. Enjoy!
All Is Not What It Seems by Grady Harp
MARRIED LIFE will probably fare better in the DVD format where this at times disturbing view of marital status can be viewed in private rather than in the company of the throngs that resemble the characters depicted in this fine little film. Based on the novel ‘Five Roundabouts to Heaven’ by John Bingham and well adapted to the screen by Oren Moverman and director Ira Sachs, MARRIED LIFE is a dissection of the hallowed state of matrimony, and one that shows the creases and little holes that make so many marriages fail. it is set in the late 1940s, likely with the attempt to give some ‘distance’ to the plot, but the messages remain in comparing the tale to contemporary times.
Narrated by perennial playboy bachelor Richard Langley (Pierce Brosnan), we are introduced to Harry Allen (Chris Cooper) who apparently has it all - big house, great job, sex-driven wife Pat (Patricia Clarkson), country home - but Harry has fallen in love with military widow Kay Nesbitt (Rachel McAdams). Harry respects and still ‘loves’ Pat, but finds in Kay the love he has felt missing from his marriage. He confides his desire to leave Pat to Richard who is surprised - until Richard meets the beautiful Kay. Not wanting to hurt Pat, Harry decides the only solution is to murder Pat so that he can then marry Kay: he researches poisons and buys a potion that he plans to place in Pat’s ever-present ‘digestive medicine’ bottle. Harry and Kay continue their secret assignations in both Kay’s home and Harry’s nearby country home, but things begin to muddle as Richard falls for Kay, and Kay’s attention shifts to Richard, and the devoted Pat is hiding her secret lover Tom (David Richmond-Peck). As the twists and turns surface, everything unwinds and the ending of the story comes as a surprise to everyone!
The quartet of actors - Clarkson, Cooper, Brosnan, and McAdams - serve the story well and the flavor of the 1940s starts with superb opening credit images and carries through with the fine decors and attention to detail that don’t seem to miss a beat in recreating the period. This is a difficult film to classify - it has comedy inherent in the absurdity of portions of the plot, it has drama in the core of the tale, and it has mystery as the surprises keep surfacing. The overall effect will be different for every viewer, depending on where in the marriage spectrum each viewer stands! Grady Harp, September 08
Entertaining Movie by M. L. Paska
“Music and Lyrics” isn’t a classic movie but one to throw into your DVD when you just want a bit of entertainment. Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore are delightful, the story is cute, and who doesn’t like a “happily ever after” ending? Love the music, too!!!!!!!
“Appearances Aren’t Everything” by JP’s Picks
Not since `Pleasantville (New Line Platinum Series)’ or `Quiz Show’ has a movie in recent memory captured the vintage setting in the middle of the last century so well. Every piece of furniture, every outfit, every office décor points to the year 1949 in `Married Life,’ but it’s really the feel and emotional tone that imprint this old-fashioned noir so well. If they didn’t speak so frankly about sex, it could have been a dead ringer original from its period.
Pierce Brosnan is no Cary Grant or Humphrey Bogart, but he’s suave enough to narrate the story. From an opening restaurant scene Harry Allen (Chris Cooper) lays bare to childhood friend Richard Lindley (Brosnan) his desire to leave his wife in favor of his mistress Kay (Rachel McAdams). As they have drinks, Richard shares his belief that he and his wife were really close. During the same restaurant scene, however, he’s immediately taken by Kay whom he meets with Harry for the first time.
At home Harry’s wife Pat (Patricia Clarkson `Lars and the Real Girl’) shows how untraditional the film can be in places. “Sex is love,” she tells her unresponsive husband. Hardly bending to her needs and desires, Harry has already shared with Richard that his preference for Kay is based on romance rather than libido.
Richard maneuvers to steal Kay from Harry while Harry tries to find a way to kill his wife “to save her from suffering” a breakup. On the surface Richard is solicitous in helping everyone involved; below the surface only he can tell the whole story of lives where “it’s hard to build your happiness on the unhappiness of others–not with [their] burden of conscience.”
`Married Life’ is not as ironic as it wants to be, but it’s emotionally solid enough to be a good new old movie experience. Cooper’s core performance is central to that movie’s emotion as well as some of its suspense. He’s already proven himself in movies like `Breach’ and `Syriana (Full Screen Edition),’ but here he’s a natural in a more vulnerable role. McAdams platinum blonde bombshell character may have us checking our calendar watches as she glamorously fills up the screen like Grace Kelly or Eva Gardner. As already mentioned, Pierce Brosnan is a natural match for his slightly tilted hat. And Patricia Clarkson adds much subletly as Harry’s secretly conflicted wife.
There are definite drawbacks as well: The build up of the movie to the denouement mainly makes the whole affair go from sizzle to fizzle. While the impact of ‘Married Life’ may not always be a big wallop, this transporting film with its quietly engaging performances are definitely a draw. If it does nothing else, it will remind you that they don’t make ‘em like they used to.
A J.P.’s Pick 3*’s = Good
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