By Fred Topel | Image property of Sony Pictures Classics.
Patricia Clarkson has made movies in earlier decades of American history. Good Night and Good Luck and Far From Heaven were both in the '50s. Married Life is a decade earlier, but perhaps a more progressive character than one might expect in that era.
Patricia Clarkson Lives the Married Life
"As you know I’ve played wives, I’ve done period movies, but Pat is beautiful in that her wit and her sense of humor, her joie de vivre," said Clarkson. "She’s sexy, she’s clearly a woman well into her forties and she’s still got somethin’ going on, she’s got little somethin’ somethin’. So probably somewhere in my psyche are all of those great actresses from those eras. I do admire many of them and I a teenager I was influenced by them. But I found Pat kind of her own gal and quite frank and honest. What she says about sex I found refreshing. And love. So it was exciting to play her."
Married Life is a drama about a man (Chris Cooper) trying to murder his wife (Clarkson), so in that there are some moments of dark humor as well. "Great humor. That’s what’s fun is to see this film. We were just at the Miami Film Festival with a packed big house, and just rolls of laughter and gasps. When we shot it we shot it for broke. Chris and I, those scenes were shot as Bergman. I’m still recovering. They were shot full out, and hardcore."
Married Life
Married Life
Married Life
Though it is authentic to the '40s, the filmmakers took a modern approach. "It’s a period movie but it’s not a period piece, so to speak. A lot of the clothes we wore were the real clothes from the late forties. I think we approached it naturalistically. Ultimately its tone and what you see, it does have style, it has a lift, it is a smashing of genres. He took the thriller, he took the melodrama and a dark comedy and kind of came up with this new cocktail."
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