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Wednesday, August 10, 2005

Invasion of the Marriage Disaster Flicks

So Janet and I saw War of the Worlds last night, a movie we wanted to see precisely because it has no emotional content whatsoever.  We were pleased, however, to find out that (and I think I’m paraphrasing a reviewer here, but I can’t remember which one) a brutal alien invasion will get Tom Cruise back in touch with his children (Dakota Fanning and Justin Chatwin).  I suppose there’s more to say about the film, particularly about Tim Robbins’s bizarre appearance as himself in Mystic River (apparently he’s now ready to re-enact the child molestation in the basement bit, this time with himself as the molester).  But what Janet and I wanted to know, as we left the theater, was how the hell the marriage between Mary Ann (Miranda Otto) and Ray Ferrier (Cruise) could ever have happened in the first place.  That’s far less plausible than a mass invasion of insect-lizard aliens driving huge tripods around the globe.

As for the closing scene, in which Cruise delivers the kids to Otto (who’s in Boston with her second husband) and Chatwin finally calls him “dad”: what is it with this narrative trope, anyway?  There’s a disaster or an invasion or a lethal virus or a mysterious bunch of aliens living in our oceans, and the story ends when the family romance is completed in some way? Quoi?  And pourquoi?

I’ve been wondering about this for some time, and even tried to write about it a few years ago, but I don’t really know what to do with it aside from pointing it out.  So, dear readers, I cheerily invite you to give it a go.  Here are your Texts for Analysis.  Please remember to write legibly!

The first example I can think of is The Abyss (1989), in which Ed Harris and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio are an estranged couple who become less estranged in the course of leading an expedition to unearth a sunken nuclear sub—and discovering the presence of a city full of ethereal beings on the ocean floor.  Never mind those beings, though—the film is over when Harris and Mastrantonio kiss and make up.

But this family-SF-disaster motif didn’t really pick up steam until the mid-1990s.  Early on in Outbreak (1995), there’s a curious exchange between Kevin Spacey and Dustin Hoffman, who play high-tech epidemiologists working for the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases.  They’re examining the highly lethal “Motaba” virus, but they’re talking about the broken marriage of Hoffman’s character and that of costar Rene Russo, who’s also a high-tech epidemiologist—which finally prompts Spacey to say, “I can’t believe you’re taking a deadly virus and turning it into a family matter.”

Basically, that’s what the movie does (and that’s what these movies do):  no sooner does the film establish the presence of a virus in the Motaba valley than it introduces us to Hoffman’s and Russo’s divorce as they divvy up belongings and hash out competing professional obligations.  Russo is moving to the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, where she will be working in the Biohazard Level 4 lab.  But because the Motaba virus breaks out almost as soon as she arrives at her new job with the CDC, she stays in close touch with Hoffman throughout the film.  And when Hoffman eventually obtains the crucial antibodies from the host animal (a small African monkey brought overseas by smugglers), he does so just in time to save Russo’s life—and, in saving her life, he also saves his marriage. 

Twister (1996) offers more of the same, only with tornadoes instead of viruses.  Bill Paxton is a former tornado-hunter and high-tech meterologist who’s sold out and taken a cushy job as a TV weatherman, for which he is ridiculed by his former crew; Helen Hunt is his ex-wife, and the subplot turns on the question of whether she’ll sign the divorce papers with which he’s presented her.  But the attempt to finalize the divorce paradoxically renews the romance (and professional partnership) between Paxton and Hunt.  As he’s delivering the divorce decree and heading off to his new life with his fiancée (Jami Gertz, who plays a psychiatrist), he gets caught up in a headlong tornado hunt that eventually leaves him and his ex (rather improbably) clinging for life amidst a ferocious F5 tornado.  Along the way, Gertz, disturbed both by the tornadoes and by Paxton’s “wild side,” decides to call off the marriage, declaring that it’s obvious that he belongs with Hunt, chasing tornadoes and living on the edge (with the wonderful Philip Seymour Hoffman as the very embodiment of that edge!).

Then there’s Independence Day (also 1996), in which Jeff Goldblum is still wearing his wedding ring after years of separation from his wife (Margaret Colin).  He’s a quirky computer jock; she’s the White House Director of Communications.  She left him because his ambition didn’t keep up with hers.  But when Earth is invaded by hostile aliens, Goldblum and Colin are thrown together once again.  He helps to save the planet, and as he does, the script saves his marriage, too.  Finally, Goldblum’s character does something to merit his wife’s affection!  If only the aliens had invaded a few years earlier!

One exception proves the rule:  In Volcano (1997), Tommy Lee Jones is already divorced, and his human drama consists of shepherding his daughter through a volcano and a custody dispute (that is, if you still observe the distinction between natural and cultural disasters).  The movie is less concerned with the state of marriage than with race relations in Los Angeles, ending with the profound observation that if we were all covered with ashes we’d all look the same.  But let’s not forget that Tommy Lee Jones finds a love interest among the ruins (Anne Hecht), a woman and geologist who’s as skilled at disaster management as he.  Volcanos can bring people together, too.

Even Mars Attacks (1996) got into the act in its farcical way, with its Jim Brown - Rosie Pam Grier subplot.  And I didn’t bother to see 1998’s pair of would-be blockbusters, Deep Impact and Armageddon.  Did any estranged couples reunite in these?  Were any new marriages forged as comets and asteroids plunged Earthward?

By contrast, in The Day After Tomorrow (2004), Dennis Quaid has to reconcile with his son, Jake Gyllenhaal, whom he’s apparently neglected in the course of becoming a climatologist with a doctorate and all.  Bad dad!  Bad!  The cat’s in the cradle and the silver spoon, Little Boy Blue and the man in the moon!  Janet insists that Sela Ward and Dennis Quaid are divorced, too, but I don’t think so.

If anyone can think of more examples, send ‘em in.  But what we really need now are explanations.  I can’t manage this one myself—I mean, it’s not like I do cultural criticism for a living or anything.

Posted by Michael on 08/10 at 09:43 AM
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