In which Nancy Meyers makes a French-styled film in America
I
just watched The Intern (2015), with my incredibly talented, smart, and
beautiful wife, and these are my thoughts about it. Written and directed by
Nancy Meyers, the film deals with the intersection of work, family, and life
satisfaction through two interlocking stories, one dealing with Robert De
Niro’s retired widower and newly minted (at the perfect age of seventy) office
intern, and the other with Anne Hathaway’s brilliant fashion-start up
entrepreneur, whose brand new, rapidly expanding online business is named About
the Fit. The interplay of our expectations and the characters’ desires plays
out like a French domestic drama, something I highly doubt Meyers gets credit
for from critics at large.
While there is a betrayal in the
film, it’s not the one I’d imagined from seeing the marketing materials, and
the way it unfolds is surprising and unexpected, and avoids the clichéd
workplace climbing we’ve come to expect from films that heavily feature office
workplaces.
Ultimately the film defies the
template we’ve seen in so many movies about modern women, where steep tradeoffs
have to be made in order for the leading ladies to have families and careers.
Familial satisfaction and the outward ordinances of modern Western-style
“success” clash incessantly and demand that we serve two masters
simultaneously, but we all know that is impossible. What is needed is balance,
and Hathaway’s character finds it, not by denying one side of her heart or the
other, but by placing her affection (despite very compelling reasons to reject
her husband) where it most belongs: on her family. That emphasis allows her to
accept her situation and gives her the courage to stay who she is while finding
the beginnings of balance. The film ends on a note of acceptance as Hathaway
and De Niro do Tai Chi in the park. Ultimately, life is about the fit.
Oh
yeah, and De Niro is hilarious, too.
