You may not know, though I think I did mention it, that we are in another hard lockdown here in Melbourne. It's supposed to only last for a week, but the number of new COVID cases from unknown sources have made a projected Thursday night end to the restrictions an uncertainty.
Time to kill two birds with one stone.
I decided this week, while I can't go out and do anything else, I will hold a little festival where I watch only movies on DVD -- and only ones I took out from the library, since I've revisited enough movies recently that my own collection is not currently crying out to me.
Here's the catch: Afterward, and only afterward, I will check to see if I could have watched the same movie on streaming. I've got five services to choose from, if you count Kanopy.
That'll help me at least determine how necessary these DVDs still are. Pretty necessary, I hope, but we'll see.
There won't be a theme to what I watch, other than having them in the house on DVD, but since I have set this down as its own distinct exercise, it seems worthwhile to write a little bit about each here on the blog. Without being able to go out, I should have the time to do that too, though I'll have to juggle my level of stamina after finishing each night with the likelihood that I won't have time to knock one of these out at work, like I once did years ago.
So far so good on the first night, as I watched the 100-minute The Wife, and have written as much as you've read so far before 11:30. It won't be as easy every night, especially on nights my own wife is not feeling under the weather as she is tonight, and watches something with me before I can get a chance to get to it.
The Wife is one of those movies you're supposed to never bother making time for. Although it did garner an Oscar nomination for Glenn Close a couple years back, word was that it was one of those movies we see quite often, especially in the best actress category: only worth seeing for the performance of the lead actress. (I haven't seen it so I can't attest to its quality, but Pieces of a Woman might be an example of that from this past year.)
That's not to say that seeing a movie that only has a great acting performance to vouch for it is a worthless exercise, and it would be particularly uncharitable to knock it down a notch because that performance was given by a woman. But I can only speak to personal historical trends, which is that movies like this have ceased to become a priority once I miss them in the year of their release. It's only more the case with actresses because it generally seems to be that men get nominated from the year's most celebrated films, and women often don't.
And so browsing the DVD shelves at the local library is a good excuse to reintroduce a film like The Wife as a priority, and I'm really glad I did.
Simply put, this is not the film I was expecting it to be. I won't tell you exactly how it differed from my expectations because there are some surprises in this film that are worth keeping shrouded. I will say, however, that I did not expect the film to have much in the way of narrative flair, simply because of how it was dismissed as middling beyond Close's performance.
Her performance is quite good, but it's not nearly the only thing to recommend The Wife. In fact, it has profound themes to consider about the role of a spouse, of either gender, in the life of a creative genius, movie star or other celebrated artist. It has a lot of thoughts on the teamwork involved in this type of partnership, both metaphorical and literal, and on the diminishing effect of this person's genius on other family members -- children in addition to spouses. It also considers the appetites of a great artist, and even though I am only just becoming familiar with the works of Philip Roth from having read one of his novels last year, I could recognize that Jonathan Pryce's Nobel Prize winner for literature was in part inspired by Roth. In fact, getting a glimpse at the inner workings of the Nobel Prize, specifically its awards ceremony, might have been reason enough to see the film.
I won't go on at length about The Wife as it's now 11:37 and I want to go to bed. Besides, that's not the type of blog series, however brief, this is. Maybe I'll have a longer discussion about other films I watch this week, especially if they don't have parts I want to keep from you because I want you to consume them on your own for the first time when you see the film.
Plus, we have other business to get to: Whether this film would have been available to me in any other way, or whether I had to watch the DVD to see this.
Now, I'm not talking about digital rental. That's an option with most movies. I don't consider that a one-for-one swap out with watching a DVD I borrowed for free from the library, because there's a cost associated with it. And yes, I can see that I could have rented The Wife on iTunes, if I'd been keen to part with my hard-earned $3.99.
But I consider renting from iTunes to be something you do when you know for sure you want to see a particular film on a particular night and it is not available any other way. It's not great for watching something you choose to view opportunistically, like The Wife.
And I checked Netflix, I checked Stan, I checked Amazon, I checked Kanopy, and heck, I even checked Disney+, given my recent discovery of the unexpectedly wide array of content that's available on that particular service.
And I can tell you that DVDs do still matter. I could not find The Wife on any of them.
Here's hoping that night 2 has the same outcome, both in terms of availability and in terms of quality, though The Wife has given that film a tough act to follow.
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