Of Men, Matrimony and Murder: Chris Cooper and Ira Sachs on Married Life

The trouble with Harry Allen isn’t his stale Married Life to a longtime supportive wife, or his illicit fling with a vulnerable younger beauty, which plants seeds of murder in his otherwise mild-mannered mind.

As played by Oscar-winning Chris Cooper as a hamstrung lonely heart in way over his head, concealing reserves of darkness, the real trouble with Harry is that he is just too…well, nice—so perfectly thoughtful that he’d rather murder his devoted wife than break her poor heart.

I recently caught up with Cooper and Married Life writer/director Ira Sachs to discuss their droll, postwar morality play and comedy of manners. In an impeccable picture illuminated by star turns from a delightful cast, including Pierce Brosnan, Patricia Clarkson and Rachel McAdams, Married Life is thoughtful adult rumination on how well any of us really knows the person who sleeps next to us each night.

Lee Shoquist: Married Life really surprised me. I was very affected by the way it charts the ebb and flow of a long-term relationship—how impossible it seems at times, and yet how hopeful it can be.

Ira Sachs: The film tries to speak to the fact that all relationships are a process of rupture and repair and that you are always separate, and if you accept that, there is a possibility of being closer to the people you have an intimate life with. So to me, the film is really to try to give people a filmic version of certain things that happen in their own lives and allow them to accept certain kinds of disappointments or distances that they might experience. I think that these are issues of trying to understand intimacy. It’s the question of how people connect or do not.

LS: The film is framed as a fairy tale and it has this sort of heightened reality feeling, an artifice of sorts.

IS: It shouldn’t be taken literally. It can be. But I think what we try to do at the beginning of the film with the animated credit sequence is say that what is to follow you can enjoy and invest in, but it kind of plays out at a level that is movie-like. And I think for me, that came from watching all of these Joan Crawford movies, like Sudden Fear or Harriet Craig or Bette Davis’ work, or noir also, where it is kind of like life, but not life.

LS: This movie is so appealing in its character-driven story that is such a light chamber piece, really, but makes its points poignantly.

All stories are character-driven if they are well told. You are always trying to figure out what is the mystery in the moment you are trying to convey in the moment. What is not known in a scene is what makes it interesting. My films are a trilogy about the nature of betrayal and deceit in relationships. The consequences of those deceits are what interest me. This film has a lightness that hopefully comes from maturity on some level. I hope my films always get a little lighter as I get older.

LS: Ira, Harry is a bit of a departure from how we ordinarily see Chris Cooper. Describe his style.

IS: What Chris brings as an actor is that he makes text and subtext equal. He brings so much to the texture of his performance. I think that is actually that all his characters are complex. Good actor. That is the nature of what makes him interesting. I had heard, "Chris Cooper turns down everything." He didn’t turn down me!

Chris Cooper: I don’t mind saying that I am picky. I am not going to waste my time on something that is not a challenge. I am going to spend that much time on a role, whether it be five month or six week shoot, I’m going to get that script as early as I can. Married Life I had for a year and a half. I was the first aboard. And periodically, I was reading and thinking about it. Then when we got the green light, I had several months to work on it. I’m committed, working every day on that piece. I don’t feel comfortable not. It’s just a joy. It’s the pleasure I get. It’s a security blanket while I’m filming. I have an emotional security blanket that I can depend on for this character.

LS: What about this subtext Ira refers to? There are currents layered beneath the surface in your performance here.

CC: I don’t want to anticipate or show my hand. I want to challenge them as an actor. This man makes some very bad choices. But I’m not going to play up the evil aspect of that. I want to make him human. We see it every day in the news. "Well, I never expected this guy to do this. Just so normal."

From the actor’s point of view, what was outstanding for me was to have these three talents who were equally committed to the project. What I see in so much film today is what I call "casual" acting. There is not a scene in this film that is casual. These actors, and characters, have an investment. They go after their needs passionately at the same time. Nobody wants to hurt anybody else. That’s it in a nutshell. It was so wonderful to know from the get-go that everybody was sort of on the same track as far as what we were going after as characters.

LS: One would hope this wasn’t a character you took home with you.

CC: During production, people ask if I take my character home with me. And I don’t take my character home in that I walk around the house in the character of Robert Hanssen (Breach). My wife would not put up with it for a minute and would kick me out. But I can’t imagine the character not being on your mind all the time because you ‘ve got another day’s shoot, and scenes the next day and next day and next day. I don’t want to take a breather when I am being paid for this little period for time, to play this character. I want to go there. That is what I think we want to do as actors. But when it is done in the can, I walk away from it. I don’t want to spend anymore time with it.

LS: The tone here is very unique. It is certainly a light comedy of manners, but it is also, at times, very tense and then poignant as well.

IS: Much of it has to do with a general aesthetic approach to my work and directing, and then casting people whom you feel are honest in what they show onscreen and there is authenticity and detail that is going to embellish the story. I also think I have great sympathy for people who do terrible things, which has partially been a good thing in my life as a director, and my personal life it gets me in trouble because sometimes you can forgive people for some really bad sh*t. But it is kind of a way of life on some level.

There were three films, and all films are like this. We wrote a film, directed a film and then we edited a film. Finding the tone was constantly something that you had to listen to what those three films were. I think that during the last stage we realized with an audience that the basic premise of the film is funny. The second thing we realized is that when the audience watches this, every time there is a twist and turn, they are not going to scream. They are going to laugh. I did go back to Shadow of a Doubt and these Hitchcock movies that are fun and sinister.

I think as an artist—which is a scary term to use—when you are making something, it is important you are both in your time and that there is a history. We’re not talking about going back to the cavemen to figure out a way of storytelling. I’m being influenced by the storytelling of Preminger and Hitchcock and Lubitsch and all these things that might go through my head. I read Henry James and Edith Wharton. I go to Paul Thomas Anderson films.

LS: Chris, you have been married for more than two decades. What is the secret to a successful marriage, and why do some go stale while others do not?

CC: Marianne and I talk about it. We have a unique relationship because we are not 9 to 5. When I’m away from home, I am gone. And if I strung all the years that I have been gone making films, it could be several years. But when I am home, we are in each other’s faces 24/7. She is an actor/writer. What I know is we give each other space. In twenty-three years, I think we know what buttons not to push. Not that we don’t confront issues, but in Married Life, it is a marriage that went flat. And what I learned is that it’s a day to day, heroic struggle to keep a relationship going. You make it interesting. You inquire about the other person’s likes and dislikes. My observation of men in relationships is that they are more likely to let it go flat, and then they are lost as to why it went flat.

LS: I was surprised by the scene on the sofa at the beginning of the film, where Pat discusses sex and Harry wants love and intimacy. It seems very progressive for the time it was written, and quite modern.

IS: One of the things that is interesting to me is that this scene was in the book. To me, it was like, "Oh, people in the 40s talked about things like sex." There was freshness to that which was interesting. In truth, at the end of the day I think Pat’s character wants love like anyone else. She discovers that. I think even people who are compulsive about sex are really just looking for love at the end of the day.

CC: If we look historically at the late 40s, things were cooking! We have this idea that things were pretty dead and bland. But just looking back at what was going on in ’49, the Kinsey Report was coming out.

LS: Yet both of them wander in the marriage, as if they are convinced they cannot have all of their needs met in one person.

IS: I think it comes around to an acceptance that you can’t have everything. But for me, what I learned from this story is that even though every relationship has secrets, and who can tell what is going on in the mind of the person you sleep with, the more transparency, the better. It’s really hard. But probably if you are more transparent, it means that you are more communicative and there is a better chance.

LS: Chris, does Harry feel wistful at all in the film’s conclusion? Does he have regret?

CC: (SPOILERS AHEAD) Harry thanks his lucky stars about everything that happened: that his best friend stole Kay; that he didn’t succeed in murdering his wife. He gets his comeuppance when he realizes his wife has a boyfriend. And at that point in the film where he catches the boyfriend running across the yard, it is tit for tat. That’s why I say he is thanking his lucky stars when he makes that transition from realizing she is not dead to what he almost did, to right at that point of telling her "I love you," and finding a way to do that truthfully.

LS: Brosnan is a real treat here. I think people forget that he can be this funny.

IS: I had never seen James Bond. I was very taken with his humor in Matador. And he is a great physical comedian, in the old fashioned way. But I think what he brings here is a lot of emotionality and vulnerability. He defines the tone of the film with his voice over. He seems like a kid. He wants so much.

LS: It is easy to see why Rachel McAdams would have this power over these men. She is very fresh and an ingenue here.

IS: Yes. It was interesting to cast Rachel because there was some question in terms of the age difference. Then I realized that Kim Novak was twenty-five when she made Vertigo, and Grace Kelly was twenty-five when she made Rear Window, and Jimmy Stewart was in his 50s. I realized that at that point in time, there were no teenagers. You went straight from being a girl to a woman. And I think Rachel, by giving her the right clothes, the right words and the right posture, became a woman in a way that was very rich.

LS: The period décor is rendered very subtly. It is handsome but not showing off in any way.

IS: Every time you make a film you costume people and build sets, and what we tried to do that authentically, but not preciously. And once we did it, we didn’t talk about ’49, we just talked about people. To me, you go back to Shakespeare. Nothing has changed since then. Once you believe that, there is no past. There is just life and how we embrace it. I think what the period gives the film is a certain glamour and bigger-than-life quality. And we’ve got these four movie stars. So you have something that is not really like our lives, but it represents our lives. I think that is one of the pleasures.

LS: There is no explicit sex in Married Life either. It is very restrained in its depiction of an older man and a younger woman, which in today’s context would be a movie about something else other than love.

IS: Very few films are about sex, and most tend to be about intimacy. There are some that are about sex that I think are fantastic if you can get in there. But I think it is a whole other story, what happens between people in a bed. Literally, it is just another story. I think this one also is more of a fable in a way, and that is not a level that fables go into. I also think that is really hard to direct. I find that even when I write sex, it disappears.

LS: Chris, I would imagine it is very uncomfortable to perform as well when you have thirty people around you adjusting everything.

CC: You would think so. But after you have done fifteen years of theater and worked with some of the greatest trainers, they teach you how to have a private moment publicly. You are trained for that. I know, yes, you have thirty people hanging around. But there is also a security in working with a director who realizes the sensitivity of that. And I don’t know where that comes from. From intuition? But Ira and Rachel and I rehearsed this for about five to seven minutes. And that was quite enough. So let’s shoot the thing. And added to that, I hope it comes through in the story that it is not like hot, lustful kind of sex. Initially, it is two wounded people comforting each other and the relationship is kind of paternal, but becomes romantic.

I had taken a film techniques class with a terrific coach who taught me how to work small and intimately with another actor, and the idea of getting the attention of yourself and focusing on the other actor, and the whole idea of great concentration at the same time, great relaxation. That may sound contradictory, but if you take any sports analogy, if you’re defending your goal, you are concentrating on your goal but you are also relaxed enough to go anywhere that opponent takes you.

LS: I would be remiss not to mention your Oscar-winning turn in Adaptation opposite Meryl Streep. What do you remember about working with her and creating that surprising and memorable character?

CC: It was one of the high points. Beyond a doubt—besides being terribly intimidated on first meeting her—I never had so much fun. She’s a great lady. She’s a mom. She’s just a great girl. Meryl and I talked about this in many respects. She feels like we work similarly, and I think we do too. There are points and choices where you trust your intuition with another actor. There are points where you worked on a character and then you throw everything away and just work with this person.

LS: How has your life as an actor changed since that turning point?

CC: I am the worst person to ask because the Oscar happened to me. Did it change my life or career? I don’t know.

IS: I think that within the system it is value—which anyone in the business is looking to gain.

LS: Ira, there are some great, witty lines in Married Life that comment on the state of a stale union. A few that come to mind are "Marriage is a mild kind of illness" and "Let’s see if we can get through life without causing any further damage to each other." Yet the film feels so optimistic in the end.

IS: I think it is an honest movie. And I think that optimism is sort of how you read it. It’s also a Rorschach Test. I think that people read it through their own mirror. It is a film that allows for a lot of interpretation.

-Lee Shoquist