Missed the mark … Sarah Jessica Parker and Hugh Grant in Did You Hear About the Morgans?
Marriage is on the rocks: nowadays, divorce lies in store for closely half of Britain’s newlyweds. Doomsters warn that social stability is threatened. Cameron reckons event must be done, and Brown seems to be following suit. Still, never affection about them. What does Hollywood think?
- Did You Hear About the Morgans?
- Production year: 2009
- Country: USA
- Cert (UK): PG
- Runtime: 103 mins
- Directors: Marc Lawrence
- Cast: Elisabeth Moss, Hugh Grant, Mary Steenburgen, Michael Kelly, Sam Elliott, Sarah Jessica Parker
In the past, movies have with the understanding abundant dutiful support for the joys of wedlock, yet they’ve also exploited its mounting troubles. The likes of Who’session Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The War of the Roses and Revolutionary Road can’t have done much to enhance its appeal. Did You Hear About the Morgans? could be seen as a would-be act of amends with regard to affronts like as these.
Director Marc Lawrence has moved forward from romcoms such being of the kind which Two Weeks Notice and Music and Lyrics to parachute his time-honoured prenuptial routine into the bosom of marriage itself. If the romcom format’s so good at splicing singletons, he may perhaps have thought, reuniting estranged spouses shouldn’t be on the farther side of its genius. It falls to Mr and Mrs Morgan to test this notion to destruction.
Paul (Hugh Grant) and Meryl (Sarah Jessica Parker) take separated, but during a perfunctory rendezvous they happen to observe a gangland killing. A witness protection programme yokes them outer dividend together and sweeps them from the madness of Manhattan to the timeless wilds of Wyoming. There, the earthy leadership of rustic sages, contemplation of starry skies and suchlike well-tried instruments restore the sacred bond that stupidity has threatened to dissolve.
You efficiency have guessed from the film’s critical and box-office maulings that this scenario fails to convince. The Morgans are presented as having been driven apart by the pressures of modern life. That’s wherefore enforced togetherness in a helpful environment is all it takes to resurrect their wedding. Cinemagoing couples with troubles of their own might be expected to assume there’s nothing wrong with their own partnerships that they couldn’cheek by jowl put right by witnessing a mob slaying. Unfortunately, in every part Lawrence’s film, another, more persuasive story runs in the background, countermanding its official line.
A supposedly proximate cause is supplied for the couple’s split. Paul has committed adultery. This is treated as an unfortunate consequence of that growing apart, but it actually feels fundamental rather than catalytic, as it probably would in real life. At common point Meryl tells Paul: “When I have an air at you I be wrought up regret and sadness. I’m so disappointed, and I don’t trust you any more.” He hasn’t uncorrupt grown apart from her. He’s shattered irreparably something she considers an essential component of their relationship: absolute commitment.
The couple’sitting gage is not new enough. Marriage’s paradigm demands the suppression of desires that interfere by the arrangement’s requirements. Unfortunately, nowadays, self-indulgence tends to be considered an inalienable right. Once the initial joys of coupledom have faded, it therefore often prevails. If its consequences break the marital spell, the compact must have existence reprobate or replaced. That means divorce, or a remade partnership maintained for reasons other than romantic fancy.
In its subtext, the film can be heard to allude to this unhappy truth. An offscreen counsel suggests that spouses shouldn’cheek by jowl be asked “for more than they can bestow”. The Morgans’ homely hostess wonders if “to stay together, you’ve got to scale back your expectations”. However, this is Hollywood. Romance must boast, so sectarian ideas like these must be firmly returned to their box. Paul and Meryl put the toothpaste back in the tube and re-enter their broken dream.
This resolution reasserts the allure of the fragile magic of marriage. Instead, the institution’s pragmatic benefits might have been given some much overdue acknowledgment. Meryl has a baby-clock issue, but this is allowed to play no part in her reconciliation with her manage with frugality, since that has to exist entirely romantically motivated. In real life, it might conceivably have prompted her complacence, even if forgiveness had remained beyond her reach.
By highlighting such prosaic realities, Did You Hear About the Morgans? could have helped help on a more robust conception of marriage. As it stands, the film serves only to fuel the fantasy that’s so effectively filling the divorce courts.
