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Mr. and Mrs. Smith: An Allegory of Modern Day
"Mr. and Mrs. Smith: An Allegory of Modern Day Marriage,"
by Susan Dunn, MA, The EQ Coach
Mr. and Mrs. Smith . who ARE these people? to paraphrase one
of the worthy lines from this movie starring Brad Pitt and
Angelina Jolie.
According to one reviewer, "John and Jane Smith are a
happily married couple who work as assassins for rival
firms." James Berardinelli considers it two movies in one,
"a sly comedy/thriller worthy of Hitchcock [and] a enormous noisy
summer action flick."
It's two movies all right, but I'd merge the
action-thriller-comedy together, and suggest it's also one
of the best allegories for marriage I've ever seen.
Who ARE those people? They're Every Married Couple . after
the honeymoon's over. No, they're not "happily" married -
the movie begins in their marriage therapist's office - but
married they are, and the more you've been married, the more
you'll laugh your head off, so you don't bang it against a
wall at the impossible sly comedy/thriller, noisy action
imbroglio a marriage can be.
Some may take this movie at face value. Others will see the
wolf's head peering out from under Granny's nightie - the
aggression that's part of marriage, and part of life.
In the shrink's office, John speaks for both of them, saying
they've been married 5 years. Jane corrects that it's "6".
The script is peppered with the sort of bickering and snipes
you hear from those disgruntled married couples you
unfortunately find yourself seated with on cruises.
When Jane 'accidentally' sticks a knife in John's leg, he
snaps, "We'll talk about this later."
When she mouths off in front of their hostage, John growls,
"It would be better not to demean me in front of the
hostage."
They are assassins, who discover they're going to have to
kill each other in order to survive. Imagine that feeling
between a married couple. As Eddie, a marvelous support
character, tells John, "This broad is not your wife. She's
the enemy."
"She tried to kill me," John admits.
"They all try to kill you," replies Eddie. "Slowly,
painfully, cripplingly. How're you going to handle it?"
Having reached the slow, painful, crippling stage, the
Smiths are living separate lives under the same roof.
Locked in a power-struggle they'd have to lose in order to
win, when they dance, it's the tango, and when they talk,
they shoot verbal bullets.
Literally doing the tango, John slams her against a wall,
and Jane fires off, "Satisfied?" "Not for years," he
replies, then hurls the knife he'd like to hurl into her,
into the wall. (See trailer here:
http://movies.yahoo.com/shop'd=hv&id=1808623299&cf=trailer
).
Trapped somewhere, Jane instructs him to turn left and even
when his life depends on it, he won't be told what to do.
Shortly thereafter they botch something, apologize
simultaneously, and infuriate themselves further. Neither
can win and neither will quit. "It's my fault." No, it's
MY fault."
As they act out for us the conflict of "can't live with
him/her, can't live without him/her" conflict, they
discover they must join forces to survive. Then they
level with each other and get honest. It isn't the
bad meals she isn't cooking that's killing the marriage,
it's the lies and half-lies. And aren't they always
shocking? But you can't kill what's already dead.
Paradoxically, it revives it.
Jane admits the man who gave her away at their wedding
wasn't her father, but a paid actor. John admits to having
been married before. Immediately Jane, the professional
assassin, demands the woman's name and social security
number, and John replies, "No, you're not going to kill
her."
Allegorically, they work through their relationship problems
the way we all must - dodging bullets and crawling around in
a speeding car, while "Making Love Out of Nothing at All"
plays in the background. How many "discussions" have you
and your partner had while dodging bullets from in-laws,
cleaning toilets, trying to make a deadline, and fighting
traffic, while chasing kids and dogs around the house?
This movie's deliciously cathartic, allowing us to
recognize, purge and perhaps purify feelings we're aware of,
just barely aware of, or in total denial of. We see acted
out the raw emotions that come with intense relationships -
the good, the bad, and the very, very ugly. As Harriet
Lerner says in "The Dance of Connection," "relentless
focusing on an issue that only gets worse feels less like a
real sharing of feelings and more like a primitive flow of
anxiety going from one person to the other."
"We need to talk," says John, after she's tried to race him
over with the car.
It satisfies the gremlin within us to see John beat her up,
then kick her a few times for worthy measure. And then, once
they've fallen to the floor exhausted, equallty-matched
as they are, Janes reaches over for one more punch to his
unsuspecting face. Most of us are too controlled to even
consider this. However, we find other ways, and the
question is, what do you do when the love affair of the
century has turned into a negotiated cease-fire?
Having reached the impasse, Mr. and Mrs. Smith feel it would
be easier to go their separate ways. Then, because it's a
fairytale, of the Grimm sort, danger comes their way and
forces the issue. They find they need each other in order
to stay alive. In the process, they get real with one
another; that is, they start feeling again. We are our
emotions, and you can't stuff one down without stuffing them
all down.
The marvelously superficial and one-dimensional characters
they meet on their journey are a foil for this authenticity.
One of the best scenes has John running for his life around
the exterior of the house, and his dog-walking, clueless,
neighbor tells him his car is blocking the sidewalk.
Haven't you taken a phone call from your hysterical wife
with your boss mouthing "Where's the hole punch?" in your
face?
It's a story of boy meets girl. Boy and girl fall in love.
Boy and girl fall out of love and want to kill each other.
In this case, literally.
And in true allegorical fashion, we aren't wasting our time
with things that don't work because they can't work (like a
wife 20 years younger), or symptoms (like infidelity or
money). It's raw material. Archetypal stuff, the stuff of
myths.
This couple suffers from the same thing that troubled
Orpheus and Eurydice in the ancient Greek myth. Eurydice
disappeared from the relationship just after their wedding
ceremony, and went to the Underworld (symbolic of the
Unconscious). When Orpheus went after her, he was given
simple, specific instructions for how to bring her back
safely, which, being human, or being Orpheus, or being both,
he refused to do.
Be prepared for a little myth, a little allegory, as our
hero and heroine shed some light on human nature, and those
two odd bedfellows, love and aggression, that are part of
our relationships, and part of life.
