Like any good cinephile, I try to take in as many nominees for the Oscars as I possibly can, including especially the ones that have gotten the most buzz for best picture, best director, best actor, etc. etc. This year has me more stymied than usual. Barbie? Was this supposed to be some kind of feminist manifesto? It read to me like a cute collection of sight gags, and I kept thinking what an awesome musical it would make. I couldn’t make it even halfway through Killers of the Flower Moon….where were the good guys in this saga of mysterious deaths? Isn’t Leonardo DiCaprio getting a little old to be playing the doting boyish husband? I never finished Oppenheimer either, since there were so many weird scenes that seemed to have nothing to do with the main events (the suicide of his first big love? What was that all about?) The director seemed to me way too enamored of the cinematic possibilities for the H-Bomb (and not the ones that would truly grab our attention—like thousands of maimed and wounded Japanese). Christopher Nolan seems a teenager enthralled with the eve of destruction, and the whole thing came off, as Richard Brody remarked, like “a History Channel Movie with fancy editing.” And for this I’m supposed to dedicate three hours of viewing time? Whatever happened to sharp, compact, memorable movies that were 1.5 hours long?
The only Oscar bait that hooked me so hard I watched it twice is Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall, which just won the Golden Globe for best screenplay. The movie has been billed as a courtroom drama, but in that category it seems to me a dismal failure, lacking any real urgency to the question of did the successful novelist push her husband to his death out the top of window of their adorably picturesque snowbound chalet, or was it suicide, or maybe just a tragic accident? We get some of the usual props of the legal thriller—the hard-driving prosecuting attorney, the stern female judge, the experts on blood spatter and mood-stabilizing drugs, and so on—but all seemed rather lame to me because I felt little emotional investment in the main character, a chilly fortyish writer played by German actress Sandra Hüller. What kept me riveted and made me watch a second time was the film’s stunning portrait of a marriage in savage meltdown, hinted at in the film’s opening sequence as the writer tries to engage in an interview with an eager grad student even as her husband plays his rock music so loud it drowns out conversation.
But the full extent of their marital dysfunction does not become evident until about two-thirds of the way through the movie, when a witness plays for the court the transcription of a fight between the two of them (Samuel, the husband, was taping bits and pieces of “real” life to use as inspiration for his writing). The battle is acted out, and we see the full arc of marital dissolution. Samuel was once the kind of man who attracted all eyes when he entered a room; he had a magnetic presence (and is played by the devastatingly handsome Samuel Theis) and was a brilliant teacher who yearned to write but was consistently blocked on a years-long project. Sandra, meanwhile, effortlessly produced novel after novel. When their son, Daniel, is left blind (whether fully or partially is left annoyingly vague in the movie) because his father entrusted a sitter to pick him up from school, both become wracked with guilt, They punish each other; they start sleeping apart. Sandra confesses to “flings.” Samuel accuses her of “plundering” his novel in progress. In the courtroom his shrink calls out her “castrating behavior” and as acted out in the film she takes a more aggressively “masculine” role in arguing. “You expect me to follow your lead,” Samuel charges. Sandra sums up the rancor between them: “Sometimes a couple is a kind chaos.”
And how!
Anyone who’s ever been involved in a circuitous and mutually flagellating marital row will find this one spellbinding. It made me wish in fact for a very different kind of movie, one that followed the couple’s trajectory from lovestruck soulmates through doting parents to unequal partners, mired in resentments large and small, an arc that finally culminates in inevitable violence. That could have been a rip-snorting psychological thriller, far more engrossing than the confusing legal drama that made it to the big screen. And perhaps even more searingly honest than Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage.
I go on at length about Anatomy of a Fall because it was such a refreshing contrast to the Hollywood-heavy Oscar contenders this year (or any year). These characters look like real people grappling with real problems in slightly exotic but still credible settings.
And it hit a nerve with me because I realize that this memoir has reached a point where I have to document the downhill slide of my own marriage, and that is a very sad and painful (though occasionally funny) exercise in personal archeology. I’m not sure how much I want to go there.
I’ve always been fascinated by marriage, and by the dynamics that hold two people together. We can look at our friends, examine their surface behavior as couples (he constantly puts her down; she persistently ignores him; they fight all the time) and wonder why the two of them are together at all. I wrote a bit on Substack about my parents’ marriage, which still seems to me the greatest of mysteries. My dad was the stereotypical subliterate engineer; my mom was an intellectually curious woman, an adventurous reader, but later in life the classic enabler who never called him on his alcoholism. And yet they seemed devoted right to the end, even if old age brought with it constant squabbling that was painful to witness. At a tiny family gathering following my mother’s death, my father seemed to confess to an affair with a Venezuelan woman, but in his final days in assisted living he cried because he missed my mom so much. None of these things points to a bad marriage, really, but they often make me wonder what marriage is all about.
And yet I’m not sure how much anatomizing I want to do on my own marriage (I’ve only had but one), but looking back, I do wonder how two people so insanely in love and for a time well matched could have reached the point, after about 17 years, to call the whole thing off (even if I never really wanted the divorce). Maybe I can go there, maybe not.
Let’s see how confessional I’m feeling next week.
Mushroom Bourguignon
I made this dish for our New Year’s Eve dinner at the gallery and was delighted with how well it turned out, rich and velvety and as deeply satisfying as its cow-based cousin. This recipe is adapted from Cook’s Illustrated, but I could not find white miso in our local grocery stores, so I omitted that from the sauce, and because porcini mushrooms are about seven bucks for half an ounce, I used only that much, instead of the ounce called for. Be sure to use a good quality light- to medium-body red wine, such as a Pinot Noir or Shiraz. I used both full-size portobello and baby bello mushroom caps, leaving the gills intact as the recipe advises. And I served the dish over polenta, but noodles or mashed potatoes would work just fine. This one’s somewhat labor-intensive, but worth the time and energy. And the leftovers, if you have any, are divine. The recipe serves 6 to 8.
Ingredients
4-3/4 cups water, divided
¼ cut extra-virgin olive oil, divided
2-1/2 pounds portobello mushroom caps, cut into 1-inch pieces
½ tsp table salt
¼ teaspoon pepper
2 carrots, felled and sliced ¼ inch thick
1 large shallot, chopped
4 garlic cloves, smashed and peeled
3 tbs all-purpose flour
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons red wine, divided
2 tbs soy sauce
1 tbs tomato paste
2 bay leaves
½ oz. dried porcini mushrooms, rinsed (or use dried shiitake)
1 cup frozen pearl onions, thawed
¼ cup minced fresh parsley
Instructions
1. Add ¼ cup water and 2 tbs oil to a Dutch oven and bring to a simmer over medium-hgih heat. Add mushrooms, salt, and pepper. Cover and cook, stirring occasionally, until moistures have released their moisture, about 10 minutes.
2. Uncover and continue to cook, stirring occasionally, until the pot is dry and dark fond forms, 10 to 12 minutes longer. Transfer mushrooms to a bowl. Add carrots, shallot, and remaining 2 tbs oil to pot and cook, stirring frequently, until vegetables start to brown, 5 to 6 minutes. Add garlic and cook for 1 minute. Stir in flour and cook for 20 seconds. Whisk in 1 cup of wine.
3. Add soy sauce, tomato paste, and remaining 4-1/2 cups water and whisk to comvine. Add thyme sprigs, bay leaves, and procini mushrroms and bring to boil over high heat. Reduce heat to maintain vigorous simmer and cook, stirring occasionally and scraping the bottom of the pot to loosen and browned bits, until sauce is reduced and has the consistency of heavy cream, about 25 minutes.
4. Strain sauce through a fine-mesh stainger set over a large bowl, pressing on solids to extract as much liquid as possible; discard solids. You should have 2 cups of sauce. (If you have more, return sauce to the pot and continue to cook over medium head until reduced. If you have less, add enough water to yield 2 cups.) Return sauce to the pot. Stir inonions, mushrooms, and remaining 2 Tbs of wine. Cover and cook over low heat, stirring occasionally, until onions are tender, about 20 miutes. Stir in parsley. Season with salt and pepper to taste and serve.
Note: I wasn’t very happy with the frozen pearl onions and may try fresh next time, which are a chore to peel and will take longer to cook.
I’m not sure but I think he didn’t mean to kill the dog at all…I’ll think on it..
I'm not the one calling it a courtroom drama--that's what the critics picked up on. And I found the courtroom scenes kind of tepid, perhaps because they seemed so far from the American system of jurisprudence (I kept wanting to scream at the screen: Aren't you going to object? That's pure speculation!). I agree about the son's manufactured story, because he was plainly thinking about that all weekend and hence didn't want his mother around. Whether she pushed him or not--I don't know--but for sure I hope she hooked up with her adorable attorney after the snow settled.
I certainly don't think there were "universal truths" to be drawn from this particular marriage; I'm only saying the acted-out argument was the point in the film where I thought it really came to life. And maybe that was the director's aim.
I believe all marriages are power struggles that wax and wane over the years, ideally held together by love but sometimes, as in my parents' union, I wonder if "co-dependence" isn't a more accurate descriptor. One of the best books on the subject is Phyllis Rose's "Parallel Lives," about five Victorian marriages. I keep meaning to reread it. Highly recommended.