I went to see The Descendants yesterday. Is it my imagination, or is every movie coming out these days about people finding out that their spouses cheated on them? If this isn’t a general trend, I must have my self-punishment radar going strong, because I keep ending up at them. I even bring them into my own home on DVD.
It started with Stupid Crazy Love, in which Steve Carell’s character learns that his wife of 20some years has had an affair with a co-worker and wants a divorce. It is a fairly Disneyfied version of a separation, though, with clean and clear borders and a (spoiler alert) reconciliation at the end. True love conquers all, everything is forgiven and forgotten, and the man and wife even share a laugh over the year’s events together. I can’t imagine laughing at the deep pain I have experienced this past year. That will never happen.
Soon after that came Chess, a wonderful and appreciated birthday present from my daughter. Josh Groban plays a Russian chess player who leaves his country – and his wife – to flee to the west and into the arms of the former manager of his rival. We see this relationship from their point of view, this lovely and loving young couple, and all is fair, their lives filled with the awe inspired by their new love. We don’t see his wife, the mother of his children, left behind the Iron Curtain – until near the end, when she is brought to him to convince him to return. That’s where I lose it – when we see her pain at having to beg her husband to come back with her.
That was followed by Walk the Line, which is about Johnny Cash and his developing career as it was helped along by his love for June Carter. We focus on their relationship, but we don’t spend a lot of time on the person I was focused on: the wife he left to be with June Carter. In another life, I might not have paid any attention to the first Mrs. Cash. Like the rest of the audience, I would have cheered for the Cash/Carter alliance, wished them success as they struggled into their relationship. But this is my life now.
Then I started watching the first season of In Treatment, in which a man my age, with children the ages of my children (including two with the same names as my children), learns that his wife has had an affair; he discovers this in the second week of episodes. The lines that haunt me from that conversation: “Whatever I did, it was not intentional. But what you did was deliberate. You made a choice – a deliberate choice to betray me and our kids.” This was so close to home, so painfully close to home, and yet I could not stop watching.
Up until this point, I could claim ignorance of the existence of infidelity in these productions. I knew very little about any of them before I saw them – I had heard that Stupid Crazy Love was funny, and I adore Ryan Gosling, so I went to see that; I knew nothing about Chess before I saw it; I knew that Johnny Cash and June Carter were married, but I did not know the circumstances of their relationship; and In Treatment took me completely by surprise. But the next movie – another Ryan Gosling film – I knew going into it that watching was going to be difficult. Blue Valentine was touted as the hardest, best movie to see last year. I knew it was about a deteriorating relationship, but the circumstances were so different from my own life that I felt I could handle it. What I didn’t count on were the universals involved with all deteriorating relationships: the broken promises, the desperation, the lust and disgust. It broke my heart to watch it, but I did.
And yesterday, The Descendants. I watched George Clooney’s face as his character learned about his wife’s infidelity, and I could feel my face matching his, muscle for muscle. When he said he had to see the face of the man his wife had slept with, I knew that feeling. That universal need – as Lara Fabian wrote in her song, “Broken Vow”: “I need to see her face, I need to understand why you and I came to an end.” I’ve seen her face, and I still don’t understand. I don’t think we ever really do.
I think it may be time to declare a moratorium on movies about the destruction of marriages. But wait – here comes The Artist. Three guesses what s
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