“IT’S A MOVIE made by grown-ups, for grown-ups,” said Pierce Brosnan, the co-star and executive producer of the romantic comedy Laws of Attraction, in an interview with Julianne Moore and Director Peter Howitt at the Beverly Hills Four Seasons Hotel before the film’s April 30 opening.
The conversation focused around commitment, and Brosnan, the current James Bond and a practicing Roman Catholic, talked about the role of marriage in enabling love to grow.
“It’s such a powerful ceremony ... you and your partner, the priest a few friends,” he said. “It’s such a powerful commitment in the eyes of God, and especially when you do it in the traditional way in the eyes of your family and friends. It’s a commitment to each other that does elevate you to another level of love, and sharing and respect for each other.
“Marriage seems to be a dying trade, which is sad really,” he said. “Divorce happens very easily, very readily. And that’s frightening, because we need to be committed to each other ... so that we can create families that are full of love, and build stronger communities. It takes work.”
Recalling the divorce courts he visited in preparation for his role, Brosnan said: “They’re sad rooms really, these courtrooms, very depressing. We live in cynical times, dangerous times, and people need hope.”
Brosnan cites his own marriage ceremony as being “deeply profound and indelible” in helping love and respect to be grounded in something more than personal whim.
Co-star Moore takes a similar view. Unlike her own parents, who met in church at age 12 and whose marriage commitment was “expected,” she said, many women like herself have grown up in a culture that “ran from commitment,” where work was first and love only something that might happen -- or not.
“A lot of women that I know work very hard at their professional life, but think that their personal life is something that will just happen to them ... they don’t take responsibility for that. You have to choose this [marriage], to want this, and you have to work at it.
“And at the end of the day, just because something goes wrong -- well, it’s because I’m going to be here that I want you to be here, too. I like that. I think it’s very positive, really truthful. ... You can’t be too intimate with somebody, not really know them, until you promise to be there.”
“I see a return to marriage as a choice ... I want this, I need this, I want to have a balanced life,” she said. “That’s what I think is going on with gay marriage, too. People are saying, ‘We want this option. We want to say publicly that we are in this for life and that we want to be a family.’
“I think, frankly, that it’s a very positive pro-marriage, pro-family movement that is happening in our country right now.”
Director Howitt, married for the first time himself just two years ago at age 47, emphasizes commitment and moral fiber. “As divorce lawyers, these two people [in the film] are surrounded by the breakdown; they’re not with people for a reason. ... But then when push comes to shove, he is a man that will fight and stay with you. And she’s nervous about that. It’s not until she’s lost him that she realizes that maybe this was the guy after all. ... She discovers in the end that he is someone whose moral fiber is quite solid.”
"We live in a more dangerous, less secure world,” said Howitt,” and if we’re going to steady the ship a little bit, the family is a time-honored tradition. ... Maybe without us saying it too out loud, we are trying to steady the boat by not being so frivolous and [by] being a bit more solid in our relationships.”
