Love and Marriage: Ira Sachs' 2007 Married Life and Béla Tarr's 1982 The Prefab People

MARRIED LIFE
(Ira Sachs, US, 2007, 90 minutes)

PREFAB PEOPLE
(Bela Tarr, Hungary, 1982, 102 minutes)

Love and marriage, love and marriage
It's an institute you can't disparage.
--Frank Sinatra (Cahn/Van Heusen)

By coincidence, I watched Bela Tarr's third feature, 1982's The Prefab People, a week before Ira Sachs's third, 2007's Married Life. 

While the former is Hungarian, the latter American, both concern unhappy unions. Aside from the fact that Married Life was shot in color and takes place in 1949, the primary difference between the two is that the blue-collar marriage in Tarr's black and white movie is troubled, whereas the bourgeois one in Sachs's appears healthy, but fissures lie beneath the surface.

That doesn't make either film a drag. Married Life, for instance, is humorous in a sardonic sort of way. Chris Cooper's Harry and Patricia Clarkson's Pat are joined by Rachel McAdams as Harry's flaxen-haired mistress, Kay, and Pierce Brosnan as his drinking buddy, Richard. 

For the story's outline, Sachs and Oren Moverman (I'm Not There) turned to John Bingham's 1953 novel Five Roundabouts to Heaven. At The House Next Door, Keith Uhlich reveals that Bingham, a former spy, was the basis for John Le Carré's George Smiley character. Married Life eschews espionage, but there's plenty of suspense, i.e. Will Harry kill his wife or not?

In the case of The Prefab People, murder never rears its ugly head, but Tarr builds suspense by beginning at the end before doubling back. Nonetheless, he and Sachs come to the same conclusion: some people are fated to stay together.

Unlike the well spoken duo in Married Life, however, Judit Pogány's Feleseg and Róbert Koltai's Ferj--they're a couple in real life--don't mince words. She: "You drink too much." He: "You talk too much." The film has a few comedic moments, too, like when Ferj tries to explain the difference between capitalism, communism, and socialism to his blank-faced son. In his view, communism is the height of perfection.

While Married Life is stylish and controlled, a cross between Far From Heaven and AMC's Mad Men, The Prefab People, the result of a 10-day shoot, feels loose and spontaneous. This may surprise those familiar with Tarr's recent work, although he still films primarily in black and white. 

In 2006, the Northwest Film Forum screened 1987's Damnation, 2000's Werckmeister Harmonies, and 1994's Sátántangó. All three contain some of the most mesmerizing long takes in cinema history. In his early efforts, on the contrary, he invades his cast's space via handheld camera, making little distinction between facial and landscape topography. 

Along with The Prefab People, the Northwest Film Forum will be showing 1977's Family Nest, 1980's The Outsider, and 1984's Almanac of Fall. (Tarr's latest film, The Man From London, remains without US distribution.)

Here she comes again / she's my best friend's girl.

The Chicago Reader's Jonathan Rosenbaum compares Tarr's early-1980s output to John Cassavetes--and the director has expressed admiration for the "personality" of Cassavetes, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and Jean-Luc Godard--but I was reminded more of Krzysztof Kieslowski, circa 1966-1980. 

Both Eastern European directors, in their younger days, had an empathetic interest in the lower classes. Kieslowski never lost his empathy, but as he moved from Poland to France, his characters, like Irène Jacob's opera singer in The Double Life of Veronique, grew in both income and stature. They also became more conventionally attractive, notably Juliette Binoche in Blue and Julie Delpy in White. The same cannot be said of Tarr's characters.

It's too soon to say whether Ira Sachs's filmography will favor one income class over another. Granted, Rip Torn, star of the 2005 Sundance Grand Jury Prize-winning Forty Shades of Blue, plays a moneyed record mogul, and his 1996 debut, The Delta, concerns a comfortably middle-class teenager, but less affluent folks are often floating around the periphery.

As a dedicated follower of the domestic drama, I found the temptation to establish links between these two films irresistible, except they're marked by more differences than similarities--except for that unhappy marriage thing. 

Neither The Prefab People nor Married Life rivals Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? or Scenes From a Marriage in the most memorable matrimony-as-warfare sweepstakes, but both belong on the short list of runners-up.

Elliptic and Unbridled: The Early Films of Bela Tarr runs at the Northwest Film Forum from Jan 8 - 30. The NWFF is located at 1515 12th Ave on Capitol Hill between Pike and Pine. Married Life opens on Mar 21 at the Guild 45th. For more information on the Tarr retrospective, please call (206) 329-2629.

Images: The Prefab People from David Bordwell's Website on Cinema and the NWFF and Married Life (Pierce Brosnan and Rachel McAdams) from Slant Magazine (c) Copyright Sidney Kimmel Entertainment.