45 Years (What a Surprise)

Warning: Major Spoilers Ahead for 45 Years

Seriously, though: who in the hell would pick Smoke Gets In Your Eyes as their wedding song? Like, you couldn’t resist the urge to make it a song about that tragedy that you were secretly still thinking about? Was it a subconscious decision? Come on, man.

And like, if your husband-to-be wants to pick a song for your wedding, you don’t give it a minute to listen to the lyrics and find out that it’s actually a mournful breakup song? That’s just your basic matrimonial due diligence, right? I feel like you might not be ready, if you don’t even take the time to do that.

And approximately all of the guests must have noticed. So they just stood there smiling? They leaned over and whispered to their dates, “that was a weird choice,” and that was that? Probably a bunch of them knew about the tragically dead ex-girlfriend. Most weddings have at least one guest who is going to say the inappropriate thing that everyone is thinking, and probably a solid handful of them if there’s an open bar.

Was there a DJ? I know wedding DJs who have disregarded requested songs for much less. I can’t imagine anyone at this particular wedding passing that guy’s name on to their newly engaged coworker. And if there was a band, that’s even worse — someone had to actually sing those lyrics. At a wedding. In front of people.

I want to say that, other than the almost Shyamalanesque reveal at the end, 45 Years was a great film. It’s true that it was a thoughtful and profound meditation on marriage and aging, in a way that Youth really could have taken a lesson from. And Charlotte Rampling gave a brilliant performance, even if she thinks that it’s totally fair that only white people get Oscars.

But honestly, I think the ending kind of ruins it. The slow dawning that, all along, her marriage has been based on a lie is just… well, bullshit. They’ve had 45 years of partnership. One of the movie’s strengths is the way it builds a little world between the two main characters, and fills it with subtle signs of their affection and camaraderie, unfolding with an unhurried appreciation for all of life’s moments. But those moments made up their life together, and to tell us that all of that was undermined requires something more than what we got.

He was a young guy who hadn’t dealt with his grief and got married when he shouldn’t have. She was an even younger girl who couldn’t tell that he was going through some things, and she probably shouldn’t have married him. But they did! They did and they loved each other for 45 years. So who cares? Maybe the both of you can gain some perspective about the circumstances that brought you together so long ago and just smile at each other like, wow we were so messed up haha, how ever did we manage to find stability through all that. And then hug a bit, and make some tea while humming happily.

I know that’s not what he’s feeling, and so he doesn’t give her a chance to react that way. He’s caught up in a complicated mixture of nostalgia, un-dealt-with mourning, and the pain of getting old. It sucks, and he doesn’t communicate it. There’s a lot he’s never communicated throughout their marriage. But we don’t see any other way in which his hiding a part of himself has ever come between them in 45 years, so really I don’t know why they are suddenly so ill-equipped to talk about their feelings. The couples I know who find their long relationships shattered because of a hidden side of one partner, whether they realized it at the time or not, had problems with relating to one another long before any secrets came to light.

So maybe it’s really just a sign of me being in a good relationship, but when the couple couldn’t speak candidly and vulnerably about their feelings, I felt like it was cheap writing somehow. The most infuriating problem for characters to have is a simple lack of communication; it works as farce, but not as good drama. If I really felt like the fault lines of this inability to open up had appeared anywhere in their relationship before, I could see it as a genuine characterization of their dynamic. But their behavior was grafted onto them for the sake of the plot, and it seemed kind of silly. Not as silly as picking Smoke Gets in Your Eyes as your wedding song, but along the same lines.