Hope Springs- Movie

          In my near 33 years of singlehood, one of the most prevalent things I have learned by observation and conversation is that marriage is rough.  It is work. It is far too easy to get comfortable and forget how to truly communicate one’s needs and feelings to one another.  And such is the premise of the movie, Hope Springs. 

            I am sure many of you have seen the preview for the movie.  You get a cast of Meryl Streep, Tommy Lee Jones, and Steve Carrell, and automatically you (or me specifically) think that it will be a movie full of laughs, tons of comedic value, and some heart string moments.  You don’t imagine that it is going to mainly have emotionally raw moments with some laughs throughout.  You don’t imagine at all that Steve Carrell can play a character who isn’t silly at all but very much so fulfills the role of a therapist who genuinely cares about the couple he is counseling.  Yet, all of these things are what makes the movie Hope Springs truly great. 

            The story itself is genuine and real.  The hardships presented in this movie are what real couples are challenged with after many years of marriage.  The very core of this movie and what it is trying to teach its audience is that communication has to be present between two people.  The reason why the wife in the movie is not happy with her husband is that she has not ever effectively communicated with him her unhappiness, and he has never effectively communicated with her his own issues.  It is only when they go to therapy, Tommy Lee Jones grumbling and all, that they begin to really communicate with one another.  The movie isn’t trying to preach that therapy itself is the answer to all things.  It doesn’t focus on that.  It focuses on two people openly talking everything out with one another, and at times, it being the one of the hardest things that they have to do.

            Another focus of the movie is true intimacy between two people.  It examines the idea of intimacy for the sake of closeness and intimacy for the sake of sex both being equally important.  Both of the characters are craving intimacy so badly, and yet because of the choices made in their past, they don’t know how to get past the blockades that they have built themselves.   In the opening of the movie, you realize that some of those blockades built are literally physical.  They sleep in separate rooms.  One of the biggest struggles that each character has is being open and candid about what they want and desire sexually from one another.  It would be very easy for a film to become extremely dirty and crude when it comes to this very subject, but the film took it on incredibly tastefully with a true realness.  That isn’t to say that the movie doesn’t have its moments with making you think that it may go over the edge in a scene or two, but overall, the topic of sex is dealt with in a tasteful way.  (For those who plan to see it or have seen it, the movie theater scene- enough said).

            The last idea that the movie hammers home is that marriage is worth fighting for.  One of the most poignant things that is said in the movie, and I can’t remember it word for word, is that when it comes down to it,  did each character do everything possible to try in this marriage.  It wasn’t something that Steve said to Tommy Lee because the possibility of divorce was on the table.  That idea isn’t ever truly explored in the movie.  But, the thing that was at stake was letting someone that you genuinely love down because you were too foolish and prideful to give them what they most deeply desire.  It is truly within a husband or wife’s power to give the other what they need most if they put that person above themselves. 

            All in all, I truly enjoyed the movie.  I think all of the actors did a tremendous job of playing their characters with truthfulness and honesty.  I think the story was a well-written and played out.  I feel like anyone who takes the time to see it, whether in theater or by rental, will relate in some way or another and will definitely be pulled into the emotion of it all.  All of these thoughts shared are ones that I took away from the film, and I am certain that someone else seeing it may see other things because of their experiences and circumstances in life.