The War of the Roses

The first and last shots of “The War of the Roses,” released in 1989, shows a divorce attorney with a tragic story to tell. He tells a client that there will be no charge. “I get paid $450 an hour to talk to people,” he says, “and so when I offer to tell you something for free, I advise you to listen carefully.” He wants to tell about a couple of clients of his, Oliver and Barbara Rose, who were happy, and then got into a divorce, and were never happy again.

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.”