Spoiler alert. This post discusses the film The Wife, directed by Björn Runge and released in 2017.
This film concerns the relationship between writer Joe Castleman (Jonathan Pryce) and his wife Joan (Glenn Close). There are arguments, revelations and finally death.
At the end of the film, Joan returns home alone. On Concorde, she opens a notebook and flicks over a page of writing to a pristine page, implying that she is ready to work on the next book.
I wanted to read what she had written, so I paused the film and froze the image on the page.
Here is what I could read….
A man who can’t remember his affairs.
(crossed out) A woman who won’t
A man who moves to Ireland to find his soul. Drinks himself to death.
A man who gives his wealth away to the poor. And regrets it. Ha!
A man who accidentally killed his boyhood friend. 50 years later.
A man who loses everything in a fire. What’s really lost?
A man who is ashamed of his fear of death. He does dangerous things to prove otherwise.
King Lear if he had a son.
Sylvia Fry turns 60 and finds love. But it is complicated.
What interested me was that most of the lines began with the prompt ‘A man who…’
After thinking about this, I developed the following brainstorming method, which I use from time to time to generate new ideas. I hope that you also find this useful.
I complete the following sentences in my notebook.
List one – Relationships
A man who
A woman who
A boy who
A girl who
A husband who
A wife who
A mother who
A father who
A son who
A daughter who
A brother who
A sister who
An uncle who
An aunt who
List two: Careers
A soldier who
A doctor who
A politician who
A leader who
A teacher who
An astronaut who
Continue the list with your own careers
List three: character attributes
All these lines are men, but develop this for yourself with women, girls and boys.
An unpleasant man remembers his past manipulations who
A man with a keen sense of justice who
A man reflects on the past with a sense of loss and
A man reflects on the past with a sense of ambivalence and
A man reflects on the past, greedy for
A man reflects on moments when he was happy and then
A man reflects on a thing that he longs for and then
A man reflects with a sense of guilt for something that he did and
A man reflects on the past with a sense of fear and
A man turns up unexpectantly and
An overconfident man who
A man reflects on something with a sense of guilt and
A man reflects on the past with a sense of a missed opportunity and
A man reflects on the past, greedy for
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