Married Life
In 2002, the film “Far from Heaven” recreated impeccably the mores and look of the early 1950s in America but filtered through the contemporary sensibility of its director, Todd Haynes. Haynes, however attuned to current times, made his characters as naïve as they would appear from a distance of 50 years. In the new film (opened March 28), “Married Life,” writer/director Ira Sachs also reproduces an earlier epoch – the late 1940s – but does it with a more knowing, sardonic style. It works, and makes for a disquieting but intriguing comedy-drama.

“Married Life” is based on an 1949 novel “Five Roundabouts to Heaven” by British novelist John Bingham and describes a tricky rondelay of lovers in an apparently serene upper-middle class Los Angeles world, where successful businessman Harry Allen (Chris Cooper) lives with his loving wife Pat (Patricia Clarkson) while their confirmed bachelor friend Richard Langley (Pierce Brosnan) circles round them. But Harry has a secret, a blossoming affair with a striking platinum blond Kay Nesbitt (Rachel McAdams), with whom, he confides to his friend, “I want to be truly happy.” Trouble is he still feels such affection for his wife that, rather than crush her spirit and foul her future by revealing the affair, he decides he must kill her. Then Richard, having met Kay at Harry’s insistence, falls hard for her, too. Needless to say, complications ensue, including a couple of clever and well-earned twists. The working out of this four-part equation is the fun of the movie (rated “R,” 90 mins).

“Married Life” is a cinematic quartet: Brosnan is the lead violin, telling the tale in smooth over voice and carrying the theme of blind love’s drives; McAdams plays second violin, offering sweet high-toned counter themes to the lead; Clarkson offers the warmer, more mature sound of the viola; and Cooper, whose self-imposed dilemma drives the plot, provides the bass underpinning for all the rest.

The enterprise is enhanced considerably by the careful period feel of the movie. Colors, clothes, fabrics, furniture are all rendered convincingly; the look of interiors, offices, restaurants all ring true. The verisimilitude on the screen is countered somewhat by the wry, up-to-date dialogue, such as Richard’s shrewd remarks or Pat’s openness about sex. What also seems modern in the story is how unaware each protagonist is about the others’ inner lives. Clueless, we call it these days.

The quartet stays in tune throughout, all performing an anxious two-part harmony. Cooper is a standout as the thwarted husband-lover, so solicitous to his wife, so enamored of his cutie. Watching his inner turmoil reveal itself wordlessly across his homely face is a lesson in subtle acting. Brosnan, a showier horse here, has to straddle two roles, too, as best friend and engaging roué; he does both with aplomb. Clarkson, instead, combines sweet domesticity with a surprising tartness. Finally, young McAdams, the ingénue among veterans, may appear a bit vacant in this company, but she still pulls off enough mystery to entice the contending males.

The motto of “Married Life” might be the summary comment Kay offers to Harry near its end: “We cannot build our happiness on the unhappiness of others.” Still, it seems, they all try to.

The Counterfeiters
Though it was released in the DC area about 10 days ago, the Austrian film “The Counterfeiters” is showing only in a few theaters and deserves an audience before it too quickly departs from the screen. Yes, it is yet another Holocaust movie, but with a fresh angle, and with a lead character not seen in previous camp pictures. It won this year’s Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film (rated “R,” 98 mins.).

Based on a true story, the film, directed by Austrian director Stefan Ruzowitzky, follows one clever Jewish concentration camp inmate, Salomon (“Sally”) Sorowitsch (Karl Markovics) as he comes to head up a late-blooming Nazi scheme to produce counterfeit banknotes to disrupt the Allied economies. Sorowitsch is a notorious Berlin counterfeiter and hustler who is apprehended in 1939 and survives in camps until 1944, when he catches a break, being chosen by the regime to lead the counterfeiting effort at the Sachsenhausen camp. There he is in the company of dozens of other Jews, specifically chosen for their special skills as printers, graphic artists, designers, etc. They live a more benign – if hardly luxurious – life in austere barracks but with adequate food and basic facilities. Sally is, however, the key: the compleat professional who can turn out the best work because of his proven forgery credentials.

This is one Holocaust story where you end up inevitably rooting for what is, in truth, a vile outcome. Because you identify with Sally and his colleagues so closely, because you value their struggle to succeed in making a “perfect” British pound, you can only cheer for them, and when they make a breakthrough on the currency, you rejoice with them – for aiding the Nazis! You must root, of course, for another reason: if the counterfeit team does not succeed, they will all die. To survive, they must produce that perfect bill.

The dilemma of life in this special camp is posed when Sally learns that one of the crew, Adolf Burger (August Diehl), is purposely destroying the printing plates to frustrate the Nazi’s plan. He must be stopped or all in the unit will die, but he is clearly doing the “right thing” in sabotaging a wicked regime’s plan. Sorowitsch is on the knife edge: does he give up Burger, whose principles he has grudgingly come to admire, or does he let the Germans get what they want for the rest to survive? It is of such excruciating moral quandaries that compelling Holocaust stories are made, and this is one of them.

The tale is much aided by the beautifully gauged, unfussy performance of Markovics who plays a cynic for whom mere drudging live is all there is, but who comes to see loyalty, sacrifice and camaraderie in a new way. He is, ultimately, a survivor yet not the kind of man he wants to be.

Films on the Hill
The “Films on the Hill” lineup for April is dedicated to a Hollywood great who has been somewhat forgotten: Ronald Colman. Of all the movie stars in the 1920s to the 1940s, few shone more brightly than Colman, a “gentleman adventurer.” A spellbinding actor, several times he was voted the most handsome actor in Hollywood. Colman's cultured, distinctive voice – which would be romantic, whimsical, commanding or tragic – was one of the most famous in film. No actor seemed more intelligent, more philosophical, more sensitive or more gallant in self-sacrifice.

All the Ronald Colman films this month are based on popular novels or plays. The series begins April 9 with the silent version of the classic weeper “Stella Dallas” (1925). On April 18, “Films” will feature Colman as the poet-rogue Francis Villon in the period piece “If I Were King” (1938), with a great supporting turn for Basil Rathbone. Finally, on April 23, Colman is, indeed, that gentleman-adventurer opposite Claudette Colbert in “Under Two Flags” (1936).

To learn more about this month’s program and to see photos of Ronald Colman, log on to filmsonthehill.com. All films are shown in the black box theater of the Capitol Hill Arts Workshop (545 Seventh St. SE). Shows begin at 7 p.m. and are shown in 16mm. Admission is $5 and refreshments are available.