This film, like "45 Years", is from the perspective of elderly couples, through the development of details and the accumulation of contradictions, depicting the complex and undercurrents under the surface of a peaceful married life. The two heroines are also the wives of forbearance.
Like the name of the movie "the wife" ("good wife"), in my opinion, this movie makes no secret of its affirmation of female energy. The heroine of the film, Joan Castleman, is an excellent domestic helper to the husband of a Nobel Prize-winning writer or a female writer who can write Nobel Prize works.
【The writer won the Nobel Prize in Literature】
The story begins when the writer Joseph Castleman receives a call from Stockholm to inform him that he has won the Nobel Prize in Literature. (Of course, the plot is fictitious at first. The winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1992 was a Saint Lucian poet.) The Castleman couple (Joe and Joan) are a loving old couple. Will answer important calls together through the extension. Will make love while imagining a scene where "a young and strong man meets a naked woman on the beach". After learning the news of the award, like a pair of children, they held hands and danced on the bed while singing "I won the Nobel" (the cutest scene in the movie).
Joe is an old man who loves sweets and walnuts. He has strong self-esteem, and strives to maintain and highlight his authority as the head of the family. At the celebration party held at home, in order for the whole family to toast and toast neatly, even the pregnant daughter must have a drink. Joan is the woman behind Joe. Remind Joe to stretch his feet more on the plane, remind him to brush his teeth with a tone, remind him that eating less chocolate is not good for his heart, and use gestures to remind him that there is something on his lips when he is surrounded by jokes. Son David, a young writer living in the shadow of his father, is introverted and sensitive. Joan thinks David is very talented in writing. But David wanted more encouragement, praise, and praise from the author's father, but he never had it. Joe always avoided talking about it. Joe did not hesitate to say about his love for his wife in front of outsiders. Joe’s toast begins with a sentence from "The Meditations of Don Quixote"
I am I plus my surroundings. If I do not preserve the latter, I do not preserve myself. My beautiful wife, the love of my life. Without this women, I am nothing. In fact, my greatest achievement is persuading this woman to marry me.
[Joan's past: the former junior of the Castleman couple, the writer behind the husband] 1958, Smith College. (Smith College is a famous Ivy League girls’ school in the United States and a member of the famous "Seven Sisters College." First lady Nancy Reagan, former first lady Barbara Bush, etc.) Joe is a professor of literature at Smith College and has a baby with his wife Carol at the time. At the time, Joan was still Joan Archer, a "Miss Archer" who had excellent writing talent and asked the professor for guidance with the manuscript. In the literature class, the professor ate walnuts and talked,
"A writer writes, because if he does not, his soul will starve. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead. "(The last paragraph of "The Dead", the last chapter of "Dubliners" by Irish writer James Joyce)
Probably that moment. Joan fell in love with him completely. I am willing to be a babysitter for the professor and couple on the weekend night. At the professor's and his wife's home, Joan sniffed Joe's shirt. See the walnut in the drawer that says [To carol, I love you true]. Stroking Joe's signature on the title page of James Jorcy's Ulysses. Say to the baby, "I am falling in love with your daddy".
Soon, Joe and Joan were together, and lost the job of teaching at an Ivy League school because of being together with female students. The embarrassed couple lived in a small attic. Joan, who has great writing potential, sees the limitations of her husband's writing, and is willing to sacrifice himself to assist him. And Joe, who is extremely self-esteem, irritable, and complains about the injustice of life, has won the favor of the publishing house by relying on Joan's first novel "The Walnut" ("Walnut"), and one after another. Lived in a big house by the sea.
And why has Joan been willing to be the woman behind the writer's husband for so many years? Don't fight or grab. No one, not even the closest children. The lens goes back to 1958. Professor Castleman took the young Joan to a book club hosted by female writer Elaine Mozell. The young Joan said that writing is her life, and a writer has to write. But Mozell told her that a writer has to be read (a writer has to be read), so women shouldn’t write because they won’t get the attention of men (book reviewers, publishers, magazine editors) and write 'S book will only be placed on the alumni bookshelf, never opened by anyone. Therefore, in the era when the talent of a woman was not recognized, even Joan, who was trained by Smith College, gave up his dream of writing and publishing a book, serving and fulfilling her husband's fame and fortune.
[Stockholm accepts the award, the secret surfaced]
In the deep winter of December 1992, Stockholm.
The Castleman couple took their son David to attend the Nobel Prize ceremony. And with the preparations, rehearsals and formal holding of the ceremony, the amazing secret of Mr. Castleman's award has gradually surfaced: for so many years, Joan, who has been gifted in writing and has a keen sense of life, wrote a This is another Nobel masterpiece signed by Joseph Castleman. However, Mr. Castleman is a man of average writing level, "running the train with his mouth full", cheating, and attaching great importance to face.
The hotel rooms are decorated with ulterior motives. The concerns of a family of three are different. The old man who likes sweets saw the chocolate and began to eat it without leaving his hands. Joan saw Castlaman's books in the room. Among them is the relatively early book "The Walnut" ("Walnut"). The old man opened a small card prepared by the conference team on the table and asked who was Sylvia Fry written on it. The son responded with a puzzled look, "Isn't this the character in your novel?"
Joan was invited by the biographer Nathaniel to have a drink in the bar. Nathaniel did a lot of research work in order to write Joe's biography. For example, Joe’s early works are not distinctive and readable, but Joan’s "The faculty wife" written in college is more like an early work of a Nobel Prize winner. For example, Joe’s ex-wife Carol said that since Joe and Joan were in The writing level rises sharply after together.
After communicating with Nathaniel, David questioned his parents face to face, saying that his mother was the only person in the family with a gift for writing and the writer behind his father's works. Father never let him into the study before. The father made the mother the slave behind the success.
[For many years, my wife filed for divorce]
Perhaps what makes us feel strange is that for decades, Joan has come over, becoming a generous, tolerant, and calm "good wife". At the moment when the writer's husband won the Nobel Prize, she couldn't help but file for divorce in a foreign land.
Disappointed at her husband's derailment
Hotels in Stockholm. In the middle of the night, Joan woke up to see that Joe was not by his side, and found him in the restaurant downstairs with Linnea, a young cameraman, and Joe skilfully memorized a section of James Jorcy's "Dead" to Linnea.
During the rehearsal, Joe, who was not accompanied by Joan, and the cameraman Linnea made affectionate. Take out the walnuts you carry with you, write your name and give it to Linnea. As a result, the walnut with Linnea's name that was not sent out was discovered by Joan.
In the dispute between the old couple, Joan said that he sat at his desk eight hours a day and focused on writing, writing pain and tolerance in the book. Joe has an affair with the nanny, and every time he cheats, Joan writes a book. It took a lot of time to use words to turn Joe's derailment and the pain to his family into literary works. However, Joe thought it was Joan's talent that forced him to derail. I think Joan is just a little woman who enjoys the privilege of writing for her and can only worry about small things. Joan's novels are all based on Joe's life. (Can the old man be more shameless?)
Her husband only regarded her as "the woman behind the man"
At the banquet, Castleman and his wife met the family of Nobel Prize winners in physics. Introduce family members to each other. The physics prize winner said that his wife is also a scientist and is critical to his work. When Joe introduced, "Fortunately, my wife never writes."
Joan doesn't want Joe not to mention thanking her in her award speech, and she doesn't want others to imagine her as "the wife who has been in distress behind a successful man". The reason Joe said he must thank Joan is, "If I don't, people will think I'm a narcissist." Therefore, at the banquet, every sentence of Joe's speech was to thank his wife.
This honor should be given to another person, my wife, who is my dream partner in life. Because of her existence, I can understand when my literary creation should be quiet. When to move like a rabbit. Without her, I wouldn't be able to stand here tonight. I just sit at home, staring straight at a piece of paper, opening my mouth numbly, but can't say a word. My wife makes me wise. She is my conscience. It is also the source of motivation for each of my creative passions. You are my inspiration, my love, and my soul. I will share this glory with you.
Finally, I was fed up with infidelity, fed up with being the person behind him, fed up with burying my talents, and made my husband a legend. Joan decides to divorce Joe. [ Suddenly ending] Suddenly, during the argument, Joe died of a heart attack. Even if Joe derails, even if his work is published and awarded under the name of Joe, even if he is always silently watching Joe being surrounded, Joan must be in love with Joe. Her attention and care for him is the habit and tacit understanding between husband and wife for many years. The two quarreled, and their daughter called with the news of the birth of their grandson, and the two immediately embraced and wept with joy.
I believe that even in the first minute, Joan was so angry that he would leave Joe and divorce him. The next minute, Joe suffered a heart attack, panting out of pain, and asked Joan "do you love me?" Joan's answer "I love you very much" must be sincere. At the moment of Joe's death, Joan's care and companionship, love and hatred, and the emotion and material of his writing were all gone. In a sense, Joe and Joan have truly become each other's other half. On the plane back, Joan denied the ghostwriting and forbid Nathaniel to write the truth. She eventually chose to be the wife of a Nobel Prize winner to defend her husband's reputation. Then he promised to tell the story to his children when he went back.
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