Why is it relevant?
Break up of a marriage through adultery / story told from "other woman" perspective / themes of reconciliation
Maggie has a plan. So many plans.
Maggie, a child of flaky academics, she learned from an early age to
be the responsible one. She has come to
manage her life by carefully laid out plans.
However, there are sayings about best laid plans and, when it comes to
the most important one that she will ever make, she will learn her lessons the
hard way.
Now well into her thirties, Maggie has come to the
realization that she has never managed to have a relationship for longer than
six months and wanting a child, she’s just going to have to take a deep breath
and take the plunge on her own.
Months in advance, she makes a deal with an old school acquaintance,
an friend who on the surface seems like perfect genetic father material. He’s an intelligent math major who followed
his heart to be an artisanal pickle maker.
As a bonus, he is quite happy to walk away after the “donation” is made;
no messy ends and complicated relationships to cloud her happy dreams. They set a date a few months down the road to
give her a little more time to prepare. All
seems ready to go but into her life walks John.
John is an intellectual free spirit. He’s trapped in a marriage with a more
successful, icy wife and two apathetic preteens. His wife is Type A, he’s a flaky aspiring
novelist. In the same field, they
frequently engage in public debates where they have more saucy interaction than
at home where he is largely ignored.
John and Maggie are accidently thrown together due to an
accounting error at the small college where they both work. He begins to approach her for her opinions on
his writing. He sees in her the
emotional support and warmth that he is lacking in his home life. These growing emotions culminate in his
showing up at her door on the very night of her planned baby’s conception to
declare his love for her and his desire to be the father of her child.
When the "Other Woman" wants to give him back.
The movie skips ahead three years later. Maggie had her child, the daughter that she
always dreamed of. But she also has
taken on the task of co-parenting John’s other children, a heavy burden given
how busy John and his ex-wife are. And
then there’s John himself. Always focussed on his book or his ex-wife’s career
dramas, he is yet another “child” in her life to manage. There is little space and time for Maggie to
devote to herself and her own career and her life is spinning out of
control. The more that she spends time
with John, the more that she realizes that she doesn’t really love him. She’s
fond of him, yes, but he really hadn’t been part of the original intended story
that she had scripted for herself and resents being so fully drowned in the
tides of his own oblivious sea.
Maggie notices that he and his ex-wife are on the phone with
each other all day long. The old
co-dependency that they had evolved to cope with the difficulties surrounding
their respective careers and children never went away and Maggie recognizes
that underlying all of this is a deep-seeded love and reliance that remains unspoken
between them. And so Maggie concocts her
most daring plan yet. She will get her
husband and his ex-wife back together.
At first, Maggie sees her most obvious ally as John’s
ex-wife. Georgette has furthered her
already hot career on Maggie’s back, making coin off her new-found tragic,
bitter, scorned first wife role. A
little trepidatious about her initial face to face contact, Maggie actually
finds Georgette surprisingly more approachable than anticipated and manages to
make an opportunity to sit down and discuss her plan with her. At first Georgette
is understandably insulted and enraged.
Even though Maggie did not actively seek out John’s affections, Georgette
sees her as the primary cause of the destruction of her marriage and family
unit. She accuses Maggie of using John
for her fun and then casting him away when she was done. A few days later though, still in love with
John, Georgette calls up Maggie and admits to being “in”.
With the help of Georgette and Maggie’s closest friends, the
plan is set in place. Scenarios are set
up to get him together with his former wife in very wild “coincidences”. Even nature plays a helping hand to make the
plan a seeming success. Everything falls
apart, however, when John realizes that he is being gamed. To Maggie’s
surprise, he’s emotionally deeper than he seemed. Emotional chaos abounds and everyone deals
with the disaster of the fallen plan in their own way.
***
It is not common but also not unprecedented for ex-spouses
to reunite. I personally know a few
people that have remarried ex-spouses.
Far easier is the trap of relying on your former spouse like an old
shoe. Habits and familiarity can be hard
to break and with a former spouse, you have the comfort level of knowing what
to expect and the type of support that you can rely on from that former
partner. It is certainly an interesting
twist to have this reconciliation premeditated from the woman who was the cause
of the split in the first place. Maggie,
however, is not a standard villain - she is the ordinary girl next door who, in
the one moment of her life that she allowed herself lived with abandon, fell
into a life that was not one she had hoped for herself nor for those she loved
and her precarious plan is an earnest and heart-felt one to set things
right.
This movie is charming and funny with very engaging and relatable
characters. It manages to take its cake
of seriousness and ice it with plenty of silly and intellectual gags. Academics in particular may appreciate the gentle
pokes at their normally serious intellectual and aesthetic world. All the cast members dip into roles that they
play best – Greta Gerwig is her usual adorkable self, Ethan Hawke is a gentle
yet manic free-spirit, Maya Rudolph pretty much invented acerbic no-nonsense
best-friendom and Julianne Moore takes on the comfortable skin of icy anxiety
and just-under-the-surface pain. And
there’s a fun little twist at the end that hints the Universe may have been
playing Maggie for a planning fool for a lot longer than she suspected. Life is messy and this movie endearingly
demonstrates just how difficult it truly is to set things in stone.
This is a watchable movie with little in the way of swearing
and only a brief moment of some very mild nudity. It could be easily watched with your older
child, parents or friends and should most definitely be watched on your
comfiest couch, under your coziest blanket with a glass of wine. It’s a real shame that this smart little movie
had only a limited release.
I just want to add that Ethan Hawke has been hitting things
out of the ballpark lately with some fantastic career choices. Boyhood, Maggie’s Plan and, most especially,
Born to be Blue have all been excellent films and whether he has been center stage
or not with these movies, his performances have been solid, emotionally complex
and relatable.
Who would like this movie?
Older divorcees, single parents, working moms, co-parents,
remarried divorcees, those who have dealt with adultery, professionals
Healing Factor:
Five out of Five Pickles
Maggie's Plan, 2015. Directed by Rebecca Miller. Greta Gerwig, Ethan Hawke, Julianne Moore, Maya Rudolph.For more info on the movie: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3471098/?ref_=nv_sr_1
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