Movie Review

Directed by Norman Jewison, starring: Andie MacDowell (Karin), Dennis Quaid (Gabe), Greg Kinnear (Tom), and Toni Collette (Beth). HBO Home Video based on a play by David Margulies, 97 minutes, 2001.

Gabe and Tom have been friends since college; room mates in their sophomore year. Karin and Beth have been workmates for years. Shortly after Kari and Gabe were married they arranged for Tom and Beth to meet and though the beginning to their relationship seems testy and brittle they are all bright and intelligent and they settle into years of holidays together; raising families; dinner with friends.

The movie begins with one such occasion. Gabe and Karin are just back from Italy with new recipes and many stories told enthusiastically. Tom is not there and in the course of the evening Beth tearfully breaks the news that he has left her for a new relationship. Gabe and Karin are devastated though she is quick to condemn Tom's caddish behaviour but Gabe withholds judgment with a kind of harassed puzzlement that renders him silent in the face of Karen's clear and voluble expression of betrayal.

In 2 Cor. 4: 7-10 Paul writes a clear description of the human condition; But we have this treasure in earthen vessels to show that transcendent power belongs to God and not to ourselves. We are hard pressed in every way, but not crushed,thrown into perplexity but not driven to despair, harassed but not abandoned,knocked down but not knocked out. We always bear in our body the dying of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may be displayed in our body.

Through the story the couples deal with the issue of being knocked down, harassed, perplexed and hard pressed. In Gabe's perplexity he is hard pressed to respond to his wife's demand that he articulate both his feelings and his "stand" on the situation. She on the other hand is hard pressed to maintain her sense of power and control. In a luncheon conversation with Beth, her friend comments "Every Karin needs a Beth; Miss Perfect. I've always been the 'ditz', the joke, the screwup". Karin replies," I spent the first 20 years of my life trying to get away from my family and the next 20 years trying to cobble together a family of my own". "Congratulations", says Beth, The family you've chosen is just as screwed up as the family you were born into".

Continuing the theme of life and marriage as a treasure in earthen vessels, Gabe meets Tom for lunch and mounts a passionate and articulate apologia for marriage in the middle years. "The key to civilization is fighting the impulse to chuck it all." "We spend our 'youth' unconscious, feeling immortal. We awaken with a shock to mortality. We spend our middle years wanting back that dream. It doesn't seem fair. Some of us try regain unconsciousness. Some of us blow up our homes. Some of us take piano. I'm taking piano".

Perhaps piano lessons sounds a trivial response to the perplexity and harassment of Mid Life. Jung reminds us that the process of Differentiation is a movement from Simplicity to Complexity to Simplicity. Tom's constant talk about self knowledge and self fulfillment has the sound of differentiation about it but in the end seems self absorbed to his friends. At the end, Gabe still seems inarticulate and perplexed in the face of Karen's demand for clarity and certitude but he has made his own "stand" in the Mens' Room of the restaurant with his friend. He doesn't use traditional religious language but he knows his Pauline Theology! Marriage is an earthen vessel and power belongs to God and not to us.

Doug Hodgkinson is now retired and spends all day in the dark watching videos.