MILLERS IN MARRIAGE: Julianna Margulies And Gretchen Mol Discuss Their New Family Drama!

Introduction

Edward Burns has been an indie staple since his arrival on the scene in 1995 with his breakout hit The Brothers McMullen. Featuring relatable characters, believable dialogue, and real chemistry, it’s no wonder it won Best Picture at the Sundance Film Festival. In the following years, he established himself as a capable writer/director and an endearing screen presence. His natural charm and calming voice have kept him in our hearts and eyes for the past thirty years. Naturally, when he’s got a new movie with his name attached, particularly as a writer and director, we take notice.

Millers in Marriage is the expected evolution of Burns’ career, featuring characters now looking at love, life, marriage, and infidelity through decades of experience. Assembling a top-notch cast, Burns creates a surprisingly relatable character study with avatars that live in a fantasy of singular creation. The Millers in question are siblings, all artists, who live in a world that most of us can only imagine.

Synopsis

Andy (Burns) is a painter, Maggie (Julianna Margulies), is a novelist who mines her life effortlessly to crank out Nicholas Sparks-quality pop fiction, and Eve (Gretchen Mol), a former rock star who gave it all up to raise a family with her active rock star husband, Scott (Patrick Wilson). Andy is recently separated from his wife Tina (an electric and unpredictable Morena Baccarin) and is currently dating her old colleague, Renee (Minnie Driver).

Maggie’s marriage to celebrated but now dormant novelist Nick (Campbell Scott) is sagging under the weight of their overexposure. Johnny (Benjamin Bratt, refusing to age), is a former music journalist, working on a book on the 90s music scene (because, achingly, nostalgia is all the rage) and vying to interview either Scott or Eve. Brian d’Arcy James rounds out the cast as a groundskeeper at the upstate playground hamlet where they all holiday.

Analysis

While their financial lives may seem effortless, they do struggle with their personal lives, navigating their homes without their kids and falling in and out of love with one another. The sibling relationship enables them to lean on one another as they trudge through these new phases of life, sharing varying levels of honesty and vulnerability.

While there is some clunky exposition toward the beginning of the film (Eve dumps her whole past onto a gym partner that we never see again), once the characters are established, these very talented actors carry the film for the viewer.

Interview

Cinema Scholars’, Eric McClanahan recently had the opportunity to talk with Julianna Margulies and Gretchen Mol about their involvement in the film and a common lambast lobbed at the overall conceit of the picture.

Lightly edited for content and clarity

Eric McClanahan:

Thank you both so much for joining me. Gretchen Mol and Julianna Margulies. We’re talking about Edward Burns’ Millers in Marriage. So I guess my first question to each of you – we’ll start with Gretchen – how did you get attached to the project? Did you read a script or just get a call from Edward and say “Yes! I’m in”?

Gretchen Mol:

Well, my agent sent me the script and said “Give it a read and then you can have a conversation with Ed if you respond.” I sat and read it that afternoon and was like “Ah, yay! A script where people are talking to one another!” And you can kind of relate; it’s a contemporary story about people in their mid-lives and there were just a lot of parallels to conversations I’ve been having with my girlfriends about this idea of “Second Acts.” I was excited, so I got on the phone with Ed and we talked about the characters, and I responded to Eve. I liked her and, I don’t know, I could relate to her journey somehow. That was the beginning of the whole thing.

Julianna Margulies:

Well, yeah, the same thing happened to me. My agent called – I think we’re at the same agency, Gretchen, with different agents. But my agent called and said, “I have this Ed Burns script and they have you in mind to play Maggie and would you read it and if you respond he would love to meet with you.” I read it that day, as soon as they sent it to me. I called my agent and said, “I cannot wait to talk to him about this script.” We lived a few blocks from each other, so we met at a café and I jumped in with both feet completely confident because the material was so good.

Eric McClanahan:

Yeah, there’s a great line said by Campbell Scott, who plays Nick, your character’s husband in the film, saying of Maggie’s latest book that it’s “Rich people and their champagne problems.” One could lob that same accusation at the film itself. Julianna, what do you think is the introduction for the common viewer into this story?

Julianna Margulies:

I think the introduction for the common viewer into this story is the first scene that Gretchen and I play together, as siblings. She’s complaining that her husband is never home and I’m complaining that my husband is always underfoot and won’t get out of the house. It immediately places you where their characters are in their lifetime, at that moment. And how you always think you want what another person has. Especially with siblings.

We start with me rolling my eyes when I get the call from Gretchen’s character asking “Have you seen my husband, Scott?” This has been happening since time immemorial. This phone call. This is a phone call I always get, and I look at my husband and ask “Have you heard from Scott?” and we make a joke about it. We have made a narrative about her life without really knowing what’s going on within it. Except that she’s accepting who her husband is and isn’t leaving him.

I’m sure if there was a prequel to this movie it would be Maggie and Nick and [Andy and Tina] doing an intervention with Eve saying “You’ve got to leave this guy! He’s a drunk!” But I think we’ve all accepted that she’s going to live her own life and she’s not going to do that. So we’ve stopped taking it seriously, and don’t know where she’s at in her life. She looks at my life like it’s the perfect marriage and the perfect couple and they’re just not, you know? Just hearing that right away you realize that these siblings and their marriages are in trouble.

Gretchen Mol:

I don’t know that I believe they’re “champagne problems” – I feel like they’re problems that everybody has and everybody’s dealing with and, again, that big thing being about the “Second Act.” Second chances. Everybody comes to those moments in their life where they think “Jeez, how much more do I have left? What can I do with it? What am I going to do with it?” That’s why there are bucket lists, you know? I think that they have nice houses, sure, but the problems are relatable and the way, of course, Ed Burns depicts characters and people is always with so much humanity and truth.

Eric McClanahan:

Well, that was all the time we had.

Julianna Margulies:

Oh, wow!

Eric McClanahan:

These are very quick ones. But I wanted to say, Gretchen, I thought it was great that you sang your parts in the film; I waited through the credits to see if that was you.

Julianna Margulies:

Wasn’t that impressive?

Eric McClanahan:

That was so amazing.

Gretchen Mol:

Thank you!

Eric McClanahan:

Thank you so much, both of you. It’s a great movie and best of luck with everything.

Conclusion

Millers in Marriage isn’t a perfect movie. There are tonal missteps and clunky expositional dumps. However, if you can get past that and allow yourself to get caught up in the deep performances of this stellar cast, your complaints will fall away. The film plays like the characters, themselves: flawed but ultimately likable. Even if you can’t see yourselves in their summer homes or apartments, you can still imagine yourself in their shoes (metaphorically speaking – you can’t afford their shoes).

Millers in Marriage is another quiet, understated diversion from one of America’s quietest, most understated stars. If the disconnect between the fantasy lives of its characters and their tumultuous relationships teaches us anything it’s to appreciate what we do have. We may not have their inexhaustible wine cellars but we do have each other.

Millers in Marriage is available to rent or purchase on all major outlets and is currently playing in select theaters.

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