Tag: Meryl Streep

Meryl Streep and “It’s Complicated” – As If We Didn’t Know That

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My posts seem to run in bunches.  After
two meditations on marriage in the past month, here I am again.

It’s all Meryl Streep’s fault.  If you know what it feels like when your kids run off together when you thought you were all going to dinner, or to struggle to remain your own person in a long marriage  — whether it ends or it doesn’t, or just to be married for a long time and build a family with a partner – you know this story.

We went with another couple also married 38 years.  It’s hard to describe the shared recognition, the warmth we all felt at the familiar moments on the screen – the rare family dinners with our adult children, continuing to learn and grow – together or apart, watching the accomplishments and weddings and occasional rages of each kid, accepting the fact that we’ve entered that part of life where they’re on their own – and so are we.  Children grow up and earn their own lives, careers begin to ebb, and those of us who are blessed spend those years with one another.  Or, if we must, search for and find someone else to ease the way.

It was all there, gentle, funny, loving and true.  Like looking in a mirror.  Oh – and lest you wonder whether a movie about a 50-something (or maybe 60) couple recovering from a divorce – in the torrent of high-profile films and stars, it’s in the top five for the holidays.  It may be complicated, but loving it isn’t complicated at all.

Doubt – More than a Movie — Also a Time Capsule


This film, Doubt, is exceptional. Smart, funny, moving, intricate and remarkably well-acted, it is, without exception, a remarkable accomplishment. I grew up in Pittsburgh and nuns like Meryl Streep’s Sister Aloysius Beauvier were a staple in my life, not in Catholic school, but every weekend, at speech tournaments at Greensburg Catholic or Central Catholic or other parochial schools that so often hosted the competitions. 

God help you if one of your judges was one of these sisters.  They were the toughest and the scariest.  Even in the cafeteria between Round 2 and Round 3, they wandered with the same “eyes in the backs of their heads” that Sister Aloysius demonstrates to her young protege.  The teams they coached were the amazing.  Practiced, smart, disciplined and resourceful, they did the sisters proud. 

As I watched Meryl Streep as the principal of a Catholic elementary school where accusation and suspicion take over, all the memories of those scary Saturday mornings at the front of a classroom, giving speeches on labor unions or disarmament or the dangers of the Soviet Union came tumbling back. The nerves were unavoidable; when the sisters were among your judges, you had to be prepared, organized, well-spoken and committed.  Or else.

Probably the familiarity of those nuns (weird for a nice Jewish girl to have access to, I suppose) and the memory of all the Sundays I went to Mass with friends after a sleep-over added to the film’s impact.  I know I had a very personal reaction.  But whether you grew up in Idaho, Arizona or the Bronx, the film is irresistible and won’t leave you alone just because it’s not on the screen any longer.  I’m not going to talk about the plot because that will diminish the pleasure of watching it unfold, but if you respect great writing, great acting and excellence in film-making, you don’t want to miss this one.