Hollywood has long been in the business of minimizing marriage. Every sitcom I’ve ever seen must, it seems, regularly joke about how marriage is a prison, a trap, a why-did-we-ever-get-married bad idea.

So it is in “The Roses,” a new release starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman. In “The Roses,” we are thrust immediately into a therapy office where our married couple is, as we might expect based on Hollywood’s track record, dysfunctional. Their dysfunction is so intense, in fact, that the therapist closes the session by remarking on the hopelessness of their situation. “I don’t think you have the capacity to fix your problems,” she notes.

At that, we’re thrown back in time 10 years to see the beginning of their relationship. And honestly, in a lot of ways, it’s lovely. They fall in love quickly, get married, have a couple kids, and communicate and express their emotions well.

This healthy relationship continues for about 40 minutes, five years in the movie’s time.

I wish they’d stopped the film there. Do that and cut the opening scene, and you’d have a hopeful short film about the blessing and unique benefits of marriage.

Of course, it doesn’t stop there. We know things get bad. We know this marriage does not stay in healthy territory.

What could follow, and I’d argue should follow, is a serious, somber exploration of how a model marriage could devolve into brokenness. Such a warning might be worth watching.

The main goal of “The Roses,” however, isn’t to provoke us to consider how we might maintain a strong marriage. No, what it really wants is laughs.

So, as the marriage crumbles, we don’t mourn as we should. Instead, light-hearted music plays as the marriage devolution occurs, as the couple tosses verbal bombs at each other, and, eventually, shoot at and attempt to stab one another. Undoubtedly, we are meant to laugh at the craziness that ensues with this failing marriage.

In one particularly frustrating moment, the idea of their parents’ divorce is actually celebrated by our couple’s teenage children. “We want you to be done with this,” their daughter says. In my theater, at least, even this got a laugh.

Other broken marriages fill the movie’s screentime, too – all for kicks. Kate McKinnon’s character, though married, is addicted to breaking her marriage covenant, a fact we learn through jokes about transmitted diseases. Her husband makes passing (funny?) remarks about the pointlessness of life and the boredom he finds in their relationship.

It seems as if “The Roses” exists to make us laugh at failing marriages.

I’ve heard comedians, including Christian comedians, talk about the line between what can be joked about and what is off limits. The consensus, it seems, is that everything is on the table.

I get it. Comedy brings levity to otherwise bleak situations.

But maybe some things shouldn’t be played for laughs. Maybe, instead of making light of broken marriages, we should mourn them. After all, when marriages fail in the real world, the effect is devastation, not laughter. A covenant, meant to last for life, is broken. If there are children in the picture, they’re affected for the rest of their lives, too.

Hollywood would do better to remember the power it has to shape people’s assumptions, hopes, and expectations in the stories they tell. With “The Roses,” we’re taught that even the best marriages, even after years of health, fail, too. And when they do, it’s just funny! Plus, the kids will be okay with a divorce, and they might even wish it happened earlier!

All this is, of course, not true. And such expectations about marriage and life together do not set our culture up for success. Instead, movies like “The Roses” seem content to promulgate the ever-so-tired Hollywood trope that marriage is more burden than gift. They teach us to laugh at broken marriages and to expect their failure.

That message, too, is worth mourning.

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The republication of this article is made possible by The Fred & Rheta Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal. 

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