MY MOVIE SHELF: The Story of Us

 

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 166  Days to go: 117

Movie #272:  The Story of Us

As the movie starts (after a brief anecdote from Ben, played by Bruce Willis), the Jordan family is at the dinner table and they are doing High-Low, where each member of the family gives their high point of the day and their low point of the day. My son happened to be in the room at that moment and he looked over at me. “Hey, they’re doing High-Low,” he said. “Is that where you got it from?” It is indeed.

Where Revolutionary Road is the story of a marriage going bad that fails at every chance for redemption, The Story of Us is the story of a marriage going bad that actually gets saved. Ben and his wife Katie (Michelle Pfeiffer) are each at the ends of their ropes. Years of missed connections and petty resentments have brought them to the breaking point. They’ve tried all sorts of therapy and made concessions on account of their kids, but they just seem to drift further and further apart. So over the summer, while the kids are away at camp, they separate. It’s clear there’s still love and affection between them, but they can’t seem to find it, can’t seem to get past the regular arguments that never get closure and can’t stop experiencing their own pain long enough to see things from the other’s point of view. Despite missing each other and feeling at a loss, they can’t find a way through the fog.

But, somehow, Ben spends the summer writing about his grandparents’ marriage and has a few epiphanies about the nature of longstanding relationships. And Katie experiences how it’s both nice and weird and disconcerting to have someone else notice her. But instead of letting it pull her away from Ben, it pulls her closer to him. He’s the friend she misses. He’s the one who knows her. And she begins to understand and appreciate him in a whole new way. Out of the darkness, suddenly, they emerge. Sometimes it takes that crisis to realize what you want most out of life and who you most want to spend it with.

There are so many familiar notes in The Story of Us to anyone who has been married. Not to say that all marriages are in trouble, but that all marriages are hard and that sometimes the everyday events of your life get in the way. It’s easy for one person in the marriage to become the disciplinarian or the “responsible” one. It’s easy to fall into roles that feel natural and inadvertently take each other for granted. Getting out of those ruts takes a conscious effort from both partners. I like that The Story of Us recognizes and is representative of that.

The film is creatively structured, with Ben and Katie each narrating different parts of their history, and the hair and makeup team did a fabulous job differentiating the years gone by. Rob Reiner and Rita Wilson are sensational as Ben and Katie’s best friends Stan and Rachel, and the cameos given by Jayne Meadows and Tom Poston (as Katie’s parents) and Betty White and Red Buttons (as Ben’s parents) are fantastic. But what I love the most is how everything works together to build a complete life for this couple — their milestones and their memories, their highs and their lows.

Katie makes a pretty fantastic case at the end of the film, but the line I think about most is in the middle, when Ben says in voice over how no matter how bad things got, he always felt if he and Katie’s feet could find each other under the covers in bed at night, they were okay. I feel that way too. Even if I’m angry or disappointed or upset or sad or frustrated, I like my feet to get tangled up with my husband’s at night, like a silent affirmation of our connection and commitment, no matter what.

Of course, there are a lot of really funny lines as well. You don’t get this cast together and not wind up with a pretty funny movie. Rachel’s ruminations on the natures of the penis versus the vagina alone are worthy of a place in the monologue hall of fame. But the one I always want to shout in anger is, “And you can take that bread and shove it up the tops of your legs!”

As you do.

MY MOVIE SHELF: Sleepless in Seattle

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 181  Days to go: 126

Movie #257:  Sleepless in Seattle

Nora Ephron could really pace a movie. Sleepless in Seattle comes in under two hours — one hour, forty-five minutes, to be exact — and yet it is as rich and as full a film as you could hope for. The lives of Sam (Tom Hanks) and his son Jonah (Ross Malinger) are just as lovingly developed as that of Annie (Meg Ryan), on the other side of the country. There aren’t thinly drawn characters, and there isn’t a haphazardly thrown together plot. No, it’s just that Ephron knew how to make a scene count, knew how to impart valuable character insights as efficiently as possible, and, basically, knew how to tell a great story.

Sleepless in Seattle is one of the great romantic comedies of the late twentieth century, it’s true, but that’s only partly because of the love story. The chemistry between Hanks and Ryan is palpable, even when they aren’t in any scenes together at all, which is why they starred in so many movies together. You feel the magical connection when Annie is listening to Sam on the radio. You feel Sam’s heart catch in his throat when he sees her in the airport and on the street. You become invested in these characters. But more than just the two of them, you care about and are invested in the people around them as well.

The friendship between Annie and Becky (Rosie O’Donnell) is as sincere and authentic a portrayal of female friendship as can be. They gossip together, they confide in each other, they poke fun but only with love, and they support each other without judgment. They are true and dear friends who share interests and feelings and desires, and it comes across that they’ve been friends for a long time and that they understand each other. That’s the kind of friendship that transcends romantic relationships, and it’s just portrayed so beautifully here.

Moreover, Sam’s sister Suzy (Rita Wilson) is a sheer and utter delight. Even though she only has one big scene, in describing the plot for An Affair to Remember, she makes such an impact. She’s silly and emotional and lovely and so very like so many friends I know who talk about their favorite love stories that way. Plus she takes the good-natured ribbing of Sam and her husband Greg (Victor Garber) with aplomb, so you just know she’s delightful to be around. How Rita Wilson didn’t star in a dozen blockbuster romantic comedies on her own is a complete mystery to me.

Another small matter that Sleepless in Seattle wins big with is the treatment of the children. Jonah, Sam’s son, is eight. He has a best friend named Jessica (Gaby Hoffman), and the two of them spend a lot of time together. In a way that is completely believable and true for their age, Jonah parrots a lot of what Jessica says, because she is far more knowledgeable about things like destiny and reincarnation and airlines, plus she has her own coded language. And Jonah is demanding and tactless and naive in all the ways young boys tend to be. Again, they aren’t featured a whole lot (Jessica far less than Jonah, of course), but the scenes they are in are hugely telling and insightful and not once do they seem forced the way a lot of child actors sometimes do.

The biggest success, however, is with Annie’s fiancé Walter (Bill Pullman), who is a lovely, if boring, man, who is never once painted as a brute or a flake or a bad match at all. On the contrary, he and Annie are very much alike, and they very much like each other. They have similar tastes and are incredibly compatible, but there just isn’t a spark between them. It’s really kind of a beautiful sentiment, in its way, that sometimes everything can look right on paper and there’s no reason in the world why it shouldn’t work, except that it just feels wrong. And Annie bears no ill-will against Walter. She has no desire to hurt him or mislead him. Indeed, she thinks he’s a great man. But she doesn’t feel magic with him. And he doesn’t want to be the guy someone settles for. It’s a sad ending for them, yes, but a completely believable and respectful one, and one that is ultimately for the best for both of them. (The movie does this to a lesser extent as well with the woman Sam briefly dates, but it’s Annie’s relationship with Walter that’s really examined in this way.) It was truly refreshing for a romantic comedy at this time to acknowledge that the person you’re with doesn’t have to be a villain to be the wrong person for you, and it’s a lesson that’s stuck with me through the years.

It’s really a great little film, with fully realized characters and a fully formed plot that is funny and charming and sweet in all the right places, with a touch of sadness to make it feel real. And it does all of that in a densely packed 105 minutes. That Nora Ephron sure could pace a movie.