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: A Few Good Men

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: 268  Days to go: 262

Movie #109: A Few Good Men

Nobody remembers the beginnings of movies, do they? I mean, you remember the big moments, the climaxes, the great lines. And if you catch it on TV, you almost always miss the very beginning. At least I do. So I put on A Few Good Men excited to see the gorgeous opening of naval officers doing their patterned, ritual marching and gun exercises on the lawn. Only that’s not how the movie starts. It starts with the night-time attack on William Santiago (Michael DeLorenzo) at the Guantanamo Bay marine base. Director Rob Reiner did that on purpose. He’s letting the audience know that with all the pageantry and code of the military to come, this movie is about the death of a young man. Writer Aaron Sorkin knows the importance of that as well, which is why he gives us the character of Sam Weinberg (Kevin Pollak). He may joke that he has “no responsibilities here whatsoever,” but it’s not true. As he says, “I believe every word of their story, and I think they ought to go to jail for the rest of their lives.” His responsibility is to be the conscience, to say that even if Dawson (Wolfgang Bodison) and Downey (James Marshall) were ordered to attack Santiago, they should’ve known it was wrong. They should’ve protected him instead, whatever the cost.

Let me back up.

A Few Good Men is about the trial of Marines Harold Dawson and Louden Downey for the murder of their fellow soldier William Santiago. It’s about a gifted yet lackadaisical Naval attorney named Daniel Kaffee (Tom Cruise) with a history of fast-talking insouciance and plea bargaining, sent to cover a murder case the military would most definitely like to go away. It’s about a passionate and intelligent attorney from the JAG Corps named JoAnne Galloway (Demi Moore) who is the backbone of the defense’s case and their most vocal supporter, despite being inexperienced as a litigator. It’s about the culture of a Marine base that encourages the discipline of soldiers by other enlisted men, of hazing and torture as means of “training” their troops. It’s about the blurred lines between truth and the law and the gray area that exists between right and wrong.

Aaron Sorkin definitely has a reputation for letting his biases take over his storytelling, but I think A Few Good Men succeeds as his most measured and even-handed piece. Yes, Colonel Jessup (Jack Nicholson) and Lt. Kendrick (Kiefer Sutherland) are portrayed as fanatical and arrogant and wrongheaded, but most of the military members are not — not even most of the Marines. It’s the (admittedly) rare moment when Sorkin has something thoughtful to say about an institution that is absolutely honorable and should absolutely be respected, but which at times conducts itself in ways that aren’t honorable at all and should not be tolerated or respected at all (not just hazing either — he also manages to slip in the lazy, categorically ignored instances of sexual harassment toward JoAnne, though the movie doesn’t deal with that issue). And, beautifully, the court members — the jury, in this case — are able to parse the difference. Just like Sam Weinberg, they know Dawson and Downey are not guilty of murder or conspiracy to commit murder. But they are guilty of conduct unbecoming a United States Marine and that they should be punished accordingly. (Not with prison for the rest of their lives, but accordingly.)

My husband and his brother were having a conversation recently about the numerous claims of late all over the news of police overstepping their bounds with regard to force and detaining citizens and whatnot. While I think my brother-in-law had a point about not courting trouble and the law enforcement professionals being due a lot of respect for their sacrifices, the idea that someone can be handcuffed and detained simply for not “respecting” the police to an adequate degree doesn’t sit well with me. Yes, police officers — and members of the military, for that matter — put their lives on the line every single day for the good of the country and its people. But that’s just it: They’re there for the good of the people. Their mission is to protect and to serve. A police officer is literally a public servant (as is any government official), so while I feel they deserve respect, I also believe they need to earn it by respecting the people in their towns and communities — by being patient with and understanding of those in their jurisdictions, those they’re meant to protect. Not to bully them or boss them around or otherwise abuse their power in any way. A Few Good Men understands that. In fact, it’s its primary lesson. In the words of Dawson (the true heart of the film), “We were supposed to fight for people who couldn’t fight for themselves. We were supposed to fight for Willy.”

In the middle of everything else: Kaffee thinking better with his bat, Markinson (J.T. Walsh) killing himself in full dress uniform, Jessup wanting to be asked nicely, Sam telling Danny to wear his (“effety” — Trademark, Veronica Mars) white uniform, Jo getting authorization from Aunt Jenny, Jack Ross (Kevin Bacon) being “a lousy fucking softball player,” all the gorgeous marching drills, Sorkin favorite Josh Malina doing stellar work as the guy who’s going to call the President for Jessup so he can surrender their position in Cuba, and reciting every single one of a billion great lines, the thing to remember is that soldiers are there to fight for the powerless. Above all else, that’s what matters. Anything less is conduct unbecoming.