Let's stay together

Hope Springs

Crit

I was disinclined to see this, but apart from the general critical praise, a trusted colleague loved it against her expectations, so I was in--and oh, my, so surprisingly good. First, yes, of course, Streep and Jones and Carell are great, duh, and each does wonderful work with just the face. When they're in counseling sessions, Kay and Arnold on opposite ends of the sofa, it's always profitable to watch the face of the one when the other is talking.

But that's to be expected--what I didn't expect is what a brave film it is, well beyond treating a topic, the rekindling of love and romance and even sex in a sexagenarian couple. Far riskier than that are the sometimes almost glacial rhythms of the film--long stretches go by during which nothing happens but talk, or nothing happens but the same emotional logjams that have been happening. And in fact, for a good 30 or 40 minutes it seems like an emotionally-stonewalling-husband fish-in-a-barrel shoot. But that turns out to be a brilliant, dangerous misdirection, and when the cracks start to show in Arnold's armor, the stakes are raised and the blood begins to pump. By false starts and small victories and hard work--that's how the film proceeds, the same way things get better in a relationship.

Oh, and a musical postscript: wouldn't have expected to hear a song in this soundtrack that I just heard in last night's, but darned if we don't have Al Green singing the song whose title I've borrowed for the post's.

Trailers

• Zero Dark Thirty--Geez, a movie on taking out bin Laden already?
• Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away--In 3D, of course.
• Skyfall--Bond is back, and Imax has got him.