Marriage Gone Wrong

Rating: Null/10 (24 November 2009)

Without going into the plot of the movie as many of the comments from this website have impeccably done so already, I came away at first blush that the writer and author of this story - Richard Yates - provided a moral about relationships in a marriage and how fragile they can turn out to be, when couples, who impose an emotional overload upon each other in their marriage, are doomed to failure. Leonardo and Kate's performances were excellent and well tuned to the moral behind this story. The most telling to me was the final scene between the senior couple - Howard Givings ( Richard Easton ) and Helen Givings ( Kathy Bates ) - when Howard subtly revealed a good deal of anger at Helen during her trash-talk about the Wheeler family, but then thought the better of it by tuning her out by shutting off his hearing-aid. Richard Easton's performance from this scene was the most telling about the entire movie as far as I was concerned. Perhaps I was reading too much into this scene about avoiding emotional overloading a relationship.