Roger Ebert said in his review, “The attorney is
played by Danny DeVito, who also directed “The War of the Roses,” and although
I usually dislike devices in which a narrator thinks back over the progress of
a long, cautionary tale, this time I think it works.” It works because we must
never be allowed to believe, even for a moments, that Oliver and Barbara are
going to get away with their happiness. The lawyer’s lesson is that happiness
has nothing to do with it, anyway. He doubts that any marriage is destined to
be happy (as a divorce lawyer, he has a particular angle on the subject). His lesson
is more brutal: “Divorce is survivable.” If only the Roses had listen.
The movie stars Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner as
the bickering Roses, and despite both of them also starring with DeVito in “Romancing
the Stone,” those two movies could not be more different. Ebert said, ““The War
of the Roses” is a black, angry, bitter, unrelenting comedy, a war between the
sexes that makes James Thurber’s work on the same subject look almost resigned
by comparison.”
However, the Roses fell so naturally and easily into
love, during those first bright days so long ago. They met at an auction,
bidding on the same cheap figurine, and by night they were in each other’s arms
(“If this relationship lasts,” Barbara thinks, “this will have been the most
romantic moment of my life. If it doesn’t, I’m a complete prostitute.”) He went
into law. She went into housekeeping. They were both great at their career. Oliver
made a lot of money, and Barbara spent a lot of money, buying, furnishing, and
decorating a house that looks like just about the best home money can buy. Meanwhile,
a couple of children, one of each gender, grow up and leave home, and then Barbara
decides she wants something more in life than curating her own domestic museum.
One day she sells a pound of her famous liver head to a friend and realizes
that she holds in her hand the first money she has actually earned for herself
in 17 years. It feels good. She asks for a divorce. She wants to keep the
house.
That is the start of their war. Ebert noted, “There
have been battles of the sexes before in the movies – between Spencer Tracy and
Katherine Hepburn, between George C. Scott and Faye Dunaway, between Mickey and
Minnie – but never one this vicious. I wonder if the movie doesn’t go over the
top.” The war between the Roses starts in the lawyer’s office and increases
into a violent, bloody fight that finally finds them both locked inside their
house beautiful, doing fights with their very symbols of their marriage: the
figurines, the gourmet kitchen range, the chandelier.
There are so many great funny moments in “The War of
the Roses,” including one where Turner (playing an ex-gymnast) jumps to her
feet from a flat position on her lawyer’s floor in one agile movement and another
where Douglas makes absolutely certain that the fish Turner is serving some of
her clients for dinner will have that fishy smell. However, the movie walks a
dangerous line. There are times when its cruelty threatens to break through the
boundaries of comedy – to become so constant we see we cannot laugh.
It's to the credit of DeVito and his co-stars they
were willing to go that far, but maybe it shows more courage than wisdom.
Ebert ended his review by saying, “This is an odd,
strange movie and the only one I can remember in which the moral is, “Rather
than see a divorce lawyer, be generous – generous to the point of night
sweats.””
I first heard about this movie when Danny DeVito was
interviewed on “Inside the Actors Studio.” This is a good movie to watch, even
though it is dark, but you should see it because it is really good. You will
love this movie, especially with the way the story unfolds. I guess there are
people out there that could relate to this movie, even though there might be
relationships that end the way the Roses’s relationship did. Check it out and
see for yourself.
Next week, I’ll be ending, “Michael Douglas Month”
with the sequel to “Wall Street.”