In the films and TV shows he has made as a writer and director, Edward Burns has never shied away from making things personal, but maintaining the same level of creative control he had in his groundbreaking film The Brothers McMullen has often required working on smaller budgets and with younger casts, making the work itself a natural departure from his current persona. In a market starved of thoughtful adult drama, this makes his return to center stage in Millers in Marriage a welcome one, as Burns explores familiar territory after turning 50.
“All I’m looking for is a stable relationship with a woman my own age,” Burns’ character Andy can be heard telling his new girlfriend Renee (Minnie Driver), putting her at ease when she’s worried he might want kids. They’re at a summer house Renee got after her divorce, and by “Millers in Marriage” standards, he couldn’t have said anything more romantic to her when everyone else wants to be comfortable.
Andy wasn't the one who ended his 15-year marriage recently, but he can certainly be grateful that it happened when leaving the stormy Tina (Morena Baccarin) meant less stress in his life. If he wanted to remember, all he had to do was call his younger sister Eve (Gretchen Mol), whose husband Scott (Patrick Wilson) can go days without calling from the road as a music manager.
His other sister, Maggie (Julianna Margulies), is not happy in her marriage either. Her husband, Nick (Campbell Scott), has been in a bad mood since their kids went off to college, but she’s less inclined to express it unless she can turn it into a novel in her writing career. It turns out that the Millers all have artistic interests—or at least they did. Eve was a bandleader until she and Scott got pregnant, and while that’s not the focus of the story, Burns can offer wry observations about the twists and turns of his career in a field he knows well. He also displays a certain self-awareness when Nick reads the manuscript of his wife’s latest novel and concludes, “They’re rich people with champagne problems,” a not-so-subtle reference to the fact that no one in “the Millers in Marriage” has ever escaped poverty.
But Burns goes beyond that with an honest contemplation of what people have to give up to balance their personal and professional ambitions and embrace a long-term partnership. The film also offers a potential filmmaker’s code in Johnny (Benjamin Bratt), a rock journalist who pesters Eve about a book he’s working on and tells her he’s thinking of moving out of New York when he feels invisible in a young town. As Eve is quick to point out, he may be trying to appeal to the wrong crowd.
Millers on Marriage is astonishingly relaxed, even though all the characters act so nervously around each other. A cast that can seem so comfortable in their own skin lends real weight to characters who have settled into lives they’re loath to jeopardize with change, and Burns, with editor Janet Gaynor, finds an elegant, unhurried structure for the film, with hidden memories embedded in conversations that reveal what happened versus what someone is willing to share or remember about their experience. What’s withheld is what drives the drama when the three main couples come to a reckoning, but when honesty is the currency, the romance is forged in whatever open dialogue the characters can have with each other, which is all the more enticing to the audience when Burns doesn’t lose his keen ear for the gossip he’s living.
The film descends into melodrama as it nears its end and decisions have to be made, but if its protagonists are revealed to be acting in a movie, they also appear to be movie stars, making the relatively mundane misery worth watching. While the issues may be as old as time, there is solace in discovering that some things really do get better with age.
