When my wife and I began courting some ten years ago, she knew I loved the movies. I loved every bit of the cinema experience. I had favorite seats (fourth row, dead center), a favorite snack (Twizzlers), and even a favorite suburban googaplex located several miles from our urban homes. I insisted that we go to this particular theater because it had the biggest screens and best sound systems of any cinema within a 30-mile radius. For home viewing, I had a 60-inch TV, which back then was quite exotic, not to mention bigger than a Buick.
I favored a particular genre of movie–violent, exciting, well made. A new addition to Martin Scor-sese’s or Michael Mann’s oeuvre immediately made the top of my must-see list. Even on the regrettable occasions when these masters eschewed violence, their movies were still satisfyingly intense.
My wife-to-be happily indulged this interest, no matter how execrable my taste. She even endured Star Wars: Episode 1–The Phantom Menace with nary a complaint, other than the repeated comment that Liam Neeson’s hair looked silly. And I tried to repay her kindness. I accompanied her to see Stanley Kubrick’s cinematic train wreck Eyes Wide Shut and only chattered on for a week or so about how unendurable it was.
As our courtship turned into marriage, the rules began subtly to change. Oddly, the film most responsible for upending our happy movie arrangement was Roberto Benigni’s nonviolent Holocaust tragicomedy Life Is Beautiful. A friend had told us it was hilarious. As we walked out of the cinema with tears running down our faces, we both angrily noted the incompleteness of our friend’s description.
Then my wife floated a trial balloon. She innocently said that she found such movies “too disturbing” to endure. I agreed, assuming she was speaking metaphorically. Little did I know that in that instant our happy movie arrangement had been forever changed.
Even after that, I was able to con her into seeing Scorsese’s Gangs of New York. I pointed to the glowing reviews, and insisted that as sophisticated people we really ought to see it. About two hours into the movie, just at the end of Act II when Daniel Day-Lewis was beating poor Leonardo DiCaprio to a pulp, my wife whispered that she couldn’t watch any more, and that she would wait outside the theater for the movie to end.
Knowing a threat to domestic tranquility when I see one, I followed her up the aisle and immediately began begging forgiveness for dragging her to such a gory epic. Realizing that the power structure of our movie-going arrangement had been irrevocably inverted, my wife was slow to grant a pardon. She wisely milked the moment for all it was worth. After all, I had pressured her into seeing a movie that anyone allergic to disturbing imagery had no business seeing. The moral high ground was hers.
Unfortunately, the power inversion carried over to our happy home. Once we had enjoyed The Sopranos together. Then she added The Sopranos to her blacklist of the disturbing. We used to watch Deadwood together. No more. Same thing for Rome. She even refused to watch The Wire, perhaps the most brilliant television series ever.
As far as going out to the movies is concerned, finding a mutually agreeable film has become an almost insoluble puzzle. I suppose I could agree to fare like The Devil Wears Prada, but I still have some pride. Besides, I have to reckon with the reality that her list of entertainment that disturbs is ever-expanding. We’ve moved well beyond a ban on mere violence. Anything more intense than a Hallmark Hall of Fame Christmas special has the potential to disturb, and therefore to put me in the doghouse.
In this kind of marital struggle, the man doesn’t have a chance. I’ve long since meekly surrendered to my wife’s cinema ban on all things disturbing. When an epic like the recent American Gangster hits the theaters, I wistfully recall the days when I would see such a film on opening night. Then I thank God for Net-flix and my wife’s book club.
At home, I have to take care to make sure disturbing images don’t inadvertently harass her. Every now and then, I’ll weaken, notice that The Departed is on HBO, and try to sneak a few minutes of viewing even though my wife is in the next room. This is what it’s come to–I’m a mayhem-starved junkie, foolishly hitting up whenever the chance presents itself.
But I know that if she hears the Dropkick Murphys shouting “Shipping up to Boston” and sees Matt Damon’s smooshed matinee idol looks on our TV, then a real disturbance will ensue.
DEAN BARNETT
