STUDIO: Sony
RELEASE DATE: September 2, 2008
STARRING: Chris Cooper, Pierce Brosnan, Patricia Clarkson, and Rachel McAdams
WRITTEN BY: Ira Sachs & Oren Moverman
DIRECTED BY: Ira Sachs
FEATURES: Commentary With Director Ira Sachs
Three Alternate Endings

Writers and filmmakers will always be obsessed with the mystery of marriage. The concept that something twisted lurks below the perfection personified by the picket fence is as old as the written word. Based on the book Five Roundabouts to Heaven by John Bingham, Ira Sachs' Married Life is another dramatic thriller about the undercurrents of evil that can flow beneath even the most docile facade. It's like Mad Men meets Hitchcock. The well-dressed men of this "psychological suspense thriller and comedy of manners" (according to Gene Seymour of Newsday on the back of the Blu-Ray case) are Harry (Chris Cooper) and his friend Rich (Pierce Brosnan). Their counterparts are the lovely Pat (Patricia Clarkson) and Kay (Rachel McAdams). Pat is married to Harry, who is having an affair with Kay, who happens to be the object of affection for the always-single Rich. As you can tell, things get complicated, especially after Pat displays the kind of health problems that make Harry feel like he can't leave the poor woman with a standard divorce. How else do you get rid of your wife? But Pat has secrets of her own. So do Kay and Rich for that matter. Married Life is about what makes up a marriage - the combination of emotional and sexual attraction - and how easily that can all fall apart.

With a great cast like the Oscar-winning Chris Cooper and Oscar-nominated Patricia Clarkson and the beautiful Rachel McAdams and stunning Pierce Brosnan, it's surprising how slow-moving Married Life ended up. Ira Sachs' film is one that I always wanted to like - I love Hitchcockian dramas and pieces about stuffed-up people coming apart - but this thing is shot and written with all the pacing of a slow-moving iceberg. And it's filmed and structured so statically that it becomes almost numbing. I simply didn't care what happened to any of the players in this melodrama and the narration by Brosnan bugged me to no end. Narration is never a good idea, but narration by a character who wouldn't even know all of the details on display is even more frustrating. Not only is this not Rich's story, but he shouldn't even know half of it. The actors are all fantastic but the words that are coming out of their mouths sound too theatrical and forced, like you're watching a filmed play. In the end, Married Life is kind of like the institution for some people, it drags and it's a little unsure of itself.

How unsure? There are three drastically different endings (for a total of four) on the Blu-Ray DVD. One even involves old-age makeup, a car crash, and a murder. In his commentary on the alternate endings, director Ira Sachs mentions the old axiom that a movie is written three times - when it's written, when it's shot, and when it's edited - but don't you think they need to have some idea what the movie is about while you're going through those first two processes? If you have no clear idea what the ending of your film is going to be, is it possible to make a cohesive vision those first two times you shoot it? Married Life might be the best proof yet that it isn't. The entire film feels like an experiment, like great actors working towards something when they don't know the location of the finish line. And, I'm sorry to pile on the negatives, but it doesn't even look great on Blu-Ray. Married Life is proof that not all Blu-Ray is created equal. I know that there's no way Married Life will take advantage of my HD TV like, say, Transformers, but the picture is still surprisingly flat. In fact, an upconverted standard DVD that I watched just before Married Life looked more high definition and vibrant. See Married Life just as an acting exercise, but don't expect much more than that from the movie or the Blu-Ray disc.