Review: MILLERS IN MARRIAGE

 by Patrick Bromley

Ed Burns grows up, kind of.

If you've been following his career over the last 30 years, Millers in Marriage, the latest film from writer/director Edward Burns, is going to feel very familiar. It is, in many ways, a revisit of the same ideas and themes he was working out in his 1996 breakthrough feature The Brothers McMullen, a story of family and relationships, of those afraid to commit and those seemingly unable. Though he's been making movies in the indie trenches for the last three decades, Burns has never strayed far from the formula that seems to work best for him, typically working with ensemble casts in films that are about dialogue and performances, not plot. And while Burns has never been much of a visual stylist, he's still a born filmmaker, someone who has continued to make movies not in the hopes of finding mainstream success but because he has to tell stories. It's a quality I've always admired in him as a writer/director and a tradition that carries into Millers in Marriage. 

Burns is Andy, an artist and part of the close-knit Miller family. His successful writer sister Maggie (Julianna Margulies) has been married to her husband Nick (Campbell Scott), another great novelist experiencing a years-long case of writer's block, for a long time -- maybe too long, as evidenced by the fact that she's sleeping with the groundskeeper (Spotlight's Brian d'Arcy James) and harboring resentment towards her husband, as he does towards her. Andy's other sister Eve (Gretchen Mol in a welcome return) is an unhappy empty-nester and former musician married to an alcoholic (Patrick Wilson) whose life takes a turn when a journalist (Benjamin Bratt) takes an interest in her both personally and professionally. Finally, there's Andy, separated from a terrible woman (Morena Baccarin) and dating a much nice one (Minnie Driver) even though baggage from the past keeps threatening to ruin a good thing.

If these story threads sounds a lot like past Burns efforts The Brothers McMullen or She's the One or The Groomsmen -- sibling relationships, infidelity, fear of commitment, revisiting ghosts from the past -- that's because Millers in Marriage feels like Burns revisiting his filmography and doing his Greatest Hits only with 30 years of age and experience on him. His dialogue has matured, his perspective has deepened. I would make a case that he's also gotten better at working with actors, but the truth is that his casts are better and this might be the best one he's ever had. Scenes rarely focus on the ensemble here, though, instead pairing the cast off into two-person dramas: Mol and Wilson or Mol and Bratt; Burns and Driver or Burns and Baccarin; Margulies and Scott or Margulies and James. It's unfortunate that we only get one or two scenes with the whole cast together, but such are the limitations of making a low-budget film with a cast of movie stars and busy schedules. 

While it's more polished and professional than some of his previous work -- thanks, in part, to DP William Rexer's handsome photography -- Millers in Marriage also distinguishes itself by approaching Burns' usual cinematic preoccupations with a more adult lens. Without spoiling any of the movie's developments, there is a practicality to the characters' choices that wouldn't have been possible when Burns was a young romantic. The director retains his traditional point-and-shoot style (it's nowhere near as flat as say, Kevin Smith's, but Woody Allen remains Burns' primary visual influence), but the editing here is more sophisticated, nesting flashbacks inside of flashbacks and withholding necessary information on a need-to-know basis. It's an effective technique in that it adds some style and mystery into what is otherwise an entirely dialogue-driven film, but also because Millers in Marriage is a movie about the things its characters don't say, the thoughts and feelings they keep secret. The structure devised by Burns and editor Janet Gaynor reflects these emotional states, disguising truths in memories and revealing them only as other characters are learning as well.

To see Millers in Marriage is to be reminded of a kind of movie that rarely gets made anymore, and that's not just me lamenting the loss of the 1990s Sundance indie boom that allowed for Ed Burns' to build a career in the first place. This is a movie about adults made for adults, and while I'd love to suggest it's become the sort of thing that's relegated to streaming I don't even know if that's true when Netflix and Amazon are greenlighting titles like Kinda Pregnant and You're Cordially Invited. There doesn't seem to be as much of a place for artists like Ed Burns in today's movie marketplace, but that's what I love about him -- he continues to demand room at the table through sheer force of will, work ethic, and talent. He's hardly reinventing the wheel he built for himself in the mid-'90s, but he continues to tell the kinds of stories he wants to tell, making movies with the people he wants to make movies with. Millers in Marriage isn't just a good Ed Burns movie; it's a reminder that we're lucky to have Ed Burns making movies at all.

Millers in Marriage is in theaters and on digital today, February 21st.