The Wife (2017) and the great woman behind every successful man
THIS REVIEW HAS SPOILERS
What do Deborah Kerr, Thelma Ritter and Glenn Close have in common? First, they all are — or were — brilliant actresses. Second, none of them won an Oscar. Third, all of them have the same number of unsuccessful nominations for the Best Actress award: six. In 2019, Glenn Close may finally get her Oscar with “The Wife”, a movie that was first shown in festivals in 2017 and as a strategy for Glenn’s sake was held very long before debuting in movie theaters all over the world.
In the first sequence of “The Wife”, Glenn’s character wakes up, turns on the light by her side of the bed and realizes her husband is seated, nervous, on the other side. Soon he convinces her to have sex, saying that “she just needs to be there, doesn’t have to do anything”. She agrees. Because she has agreed to do all his wishes since they got married. Well, she is The Wife, and this is what wives do: they agree to do everything their husbands tell them to do — or at least it was what they did until a few decades ago.
The year is 1992 and Joe Castleman (Jonathan Pryce) was chosen as the recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature. Joe travels to Stockholm with his wife, Joan (Glenn Close), and their son, David (Max Irons), who also wants to be a writer. While Joe has his commitments, a woman sent by the Nobel team has the mission to take Joan shopping and to the beauty parlor as a distraction.
Joe is being followed by Nathaniel Bone (Christian Slater), who received an offer to write a book about Joe, but the laureate author is not willing to collaborate with his research. But Joan is willing to talk to Nathaniel. During one of those talks he mentions Joe’s several extramarital affairs and Joan answers that she doesn’t want to be shown as a victim in the book, because she is much more than that.
This is the truth: Joan Archer, a young lady with blue eyes and a lot of hope about what the future had for her, wanted to be a writer in 1958, when she took a class with the already celebrated professor Joe Castleman. One day, she was discouraged to follow her dream by the brilliant yet failed writer Elaine Mozell (Elizabeth McGovern), who sold just a few copies of her books. Elaine says that the world isn’t ready for a good prose written by a woman, and the female writers will never call the attention of the men who write about literature and who say what is good or not in the literary world.
The other truth is that, even though he was praised, young Jospeh Castleman was a bad writer, created unbelievable dialogues and lifeless characters. Who gave life to what he wrote, through suggestions, edition and more, was Joan, who believed in Elaine and was convinced that she would never be published — and, if she was published, she would never have readers, no matter how good she was. Without Joan, Joe was mediocre. With her, he became brilliant.
You can notice their symbiosis even in their names: Joe and Joan. At the rehearsal, without her, Joe seems lost. You may know a couple like them — maybe even your parents or grandparents are like them — in which the man feels lost without the woman. This is not cute, this is not “relationship goals”: it’s a relationship in which the woman is always emotionally overloaded.
Who hasn’t heard that “behind every successful man there is a great woman”? Who has heard about Albert Einstein’s first wife, Mileva Marić, who was as brilliant as or even more brilliant than him, and only now is being recognized by her merits? This is the main theme of “The Wife”: the women eclipsed by the men in their lives, not because the men were better than the women, but because the men stole the women’s work — and were considered geniuses simply because they were men. If we consider that this is a common fact in science and art, it’s almost a miracle that Marie Curie had the same fame as her husband Pierre — she may even have been considered more famous — during her lifetime.
By the way, we must notice that, even though he wasn’t a good writer, Joe taught writing classes for a room full of women, and was part of a literary jet set. At the same time, for each mediocre man that accepts such a teaching position there may be lots of incredible women who don’t consider themselves good enough for the same position. I’m not saying that Joan suffered from Impostor Syndrome, I’m just saying that this exists and affects more women than men.
Elaine Mozell’s speech was painful to me, a woman who writes. What has changed since 1958? Has literature really become more democratic? Are more female authors being read and published? Are still men, through websites and blogs, the ones who say what is good and what isn’t in the literary world? Will I ever have success one day or will my talent only be spread through a few copies bought by friends and family who felt compelled to help me? I don’t have answers to these questions — because, as a good movie, “The Wife” creates more questions than it gives answers — but I know that I’ll never let any man steal my work, and with this article I make the pledge public.
“The Wife” is a film that took 14 years to find producers willing to back the project. It is a film written by a woman, based in a book by a female author — these are details that make the film feel true and bring a necessary debate. Glenn Close’s performance includes anger explosions and moments in which she acts only with her breath — something extraordinary. At the heart of the film, we have the lesson: we need to stop listening to the Elaines Mozell, who say that women will never be successful, and we can’t let mediocre men take the credit from something that was actually done by great women — and to do this we need to change a whole mindset.
