律师加维（丹尼·迪维图 Danny DeVito 饰）在自己的办公室里，正在向一位想要离婚的年轻人讲述一段“玫瑰大战”的故事：奥利佛（迈克尔·道格拉斯 Michael Douglas 饰）与太太芭芭拉（凯瑟琳·特纳 Kathleen Turner 饰）相识于一场拍卖会，而后两人很快结婚生子。身为律师的奥立佛整日忙于自己的工作，曾为体操运动员的芭芭拉醉心于相夫教子的生活，一家人过着令所有朋友羡慕不已的生活。当他们实现对于家庭所有的梦想（身居豪宅、儿女上大学、满屋的古董和收藏品）之后，芭芭拉开始有声有色的经营起一家外烩公司，然而这时他们之间的关系却出现了问题以至于最终走到离婚的地步。在房子的归属问题上，俩人都毫不让步，于是豪宅变成战场，珍爱的收藏品变成砸向对方的武器，就连宠物也成为相互报复的工具…
There are films about marriage, films about divorce, and then there are films in which marriage and divorce are simply two chapters of the same disaster. THE WAR OF THE ROSES belongs decisively to the latter category. Watching it - especially alongside its 2025 reimagining, Jay Roach’s THE ROSES - I find myself thinking that Hollywood has given us many love stories, many tragedies, and many comedies, but very few works that manage to mix all three by going the whole hog to see what happens when two people who once murmured “forever” to each other begin shouting “not if you were the last human on earth.” The Roses, in either incarnation, do not engage in tiffs. They wage wars from the ground up.
THE WAR OF THE ROSES, marking DeVito’s second bid in the director’s chair, arrives with the swagger of a general who knows the battle is already won. It is bold, viciously funny, and entirely uninterested in emotional restraint. Douglas and Turner (starring in their third film together following Robert Zemeckis’ ROMANCING THE STONE 1984 and its sequel THE JEWEL OF THE NILE 1985, directed by Lewis Teague, both also co-starring DeVito), who transform Oliver and Barbara Rose into domestic gladiators who seem to be performing a dark vaudeville act for the benefit of their house, which is arguably the third and most judgmental character in the story. Their elegant home watches from its doorframes like a bored aristocrat, mildly amused that its owners have devolved into the moral equivalent of two toddlers fighting over a single crayon. The difference is that toddlers usually stop before the chandelier falls.
DeVito directs it all as if staging a Wagner opera composed of petty insults, legal threats, and road-rage bulldozing. Every scene is calibrated to ascend one step higher into absurdity, as though the film were playing a round of emotional Jenga with the audience’s credulity. The joy - and the horror - is that the tower never stabilizes. Something always topples. Something always breaks. And the Roses, rather than stepping back and saying, “Good heavens, what have we become?”, simply collect the scattered pieces and weaponize them.
A salient point is there is poetry in their cruelty, though a very particular kind: the poetry of two people who have known each other too long and too intimately to fight cleanly. Their lines land with surgical precision; their gestures gleam with spite and repulsion. The film is, at its essence, a tragic love story in which the tragedy has been exaggerated into the realm of high comedy. Imagine if Dante had written The Inferno but decided the damned souls should also throw heavy furniture. The comedy is volcanic, but buried under the ash is a dark, shimmering truth: sometimes the passions that bind people together harden, calcify, and eventually cut them to ribbons.
Watching the original, one laughs - sometimes helplessly - and then grows uneasy because the laughter echoes just a little too close to recognizable experience. That is its genius. It is a baroque, over-the-top spectacle that nevertheless taps into the ordinary fear that relationships can decay into something sharp-edged and incomprehensible, and that two people who once shared a private world of inside jokes might one day communicate only through lawyers and acts of micro-terrorism with a homicidal spin.
By contrast, THE ROSES is a whisper where its predecessor is a scream, but a whisper sharpened by confession, disappointment, and the soft thud of modern anxieties. Roach’s film does not imitate the original’s house-leveling operatics. It dissolves them into something subtler, more bruised, and more familiar to contemporary audiences accustomed to juggling careers, self-care, gender politics, and the vague sensation that one should ideally be meditating, hydrating, and becoming a better person at all times.
Theo and Ivy Rose, played by Cumberbatch and Colman, do not so much spiral into madness as drift into an emotional undertow. Their marriage is not destroyed by a grand act of treachery or a particularly flamboyant insult; it’s worn down by increments. These are the Roses of the 21st century where the fairer sex wears the pants, and the object of their divorce battle is their posh, architectonic dwelling designed by Theo but shelled out by Ivy (a high-flying restauranteur). McNamara’s screenplay persuasively teases out miscalculated expectations, misplaced ambitions, and the melancholy knowledge that adult life often resembles a juggling act one didn’t audition for.
Cumberbatch plays Theo with an exquisitely awkward tenderness - a man who wants to be supportive but cannot quite silence the growing panic that he has become, in the novel of his own life, a side character. Colman’s Ivy is luminous and exhausted in equal measure, a woman whose talent lifts her upward while gravity tugs at her ankle in the form of guilt, routine, and the suspicion that somewhere along the way she has stopped recognizing the person who should have been her safest companion. They love each other, yet their love creaks under the weight of everything unsaid. Supporting players are fairly cookie-cutter bells and whistles, though McKinnon’s zany energy and anarchic weirdness is a hit-or-miss ploy and one could beg for more of Janney’s cameo as Ivy’s Manichaean divorce lawyer.
Considering Cumberbatch and Colman’s copious charisma, it is difficult for one to pick sides (unlike in DeVito’s film, Oliver’s namby-pamby yuppie neediness can roundly enable a spectator relating to Barbara’s irrefragable aversion, which is expressed to a nicety by a feisty Turner), and Roach’s film pulls punches apropos of their determination of splitting up, and suffixed a contingent ending that leaves perdition with a sly taste of irony. Where the original version is blazed with high theatricality (the lighting and interior props), the new iteration glows with melancholy lyricism and rationality that keeps the marriage’s disintegration more credible. And yet their conflict can be just as devastating, because it comes wrapped in the aches of modern love - love that wants to survive but is overwhelmed by the practicalities of survival.
In the mass the two films are portraits of the same myth - the myth of romantic permanence - rendered in radically different artistic styles (much in accordance with their zeitgeists). The first portrait is painted with thick strokes of satire, its colors loud, its shapes exaggerated until the faces nearly distort. The second is a watercolor: muted, streamlined but blurred at the edges, and more concerned with the emotional atmosphere than the physical details.
What makes the comparison fascinating is that both films are, in their own ways, adequately honest. DeVito’s film speaks truth through exaggeration. It shouts that material success, social image, and domestic perfection are not shields against emotional emptiness whereas Roach’s film speaks truth through restraint. It mutters that modern marriage is not undone by firestorms but by gusts of emotional weather - so faint and so frequent that the couple barely notices until the foundation tilts.
And so, when the credits roll on both films, what remains is not despair but a strange sense of recognition, as though each film has held up a mirror tinged with irony. The 1989 mirror reflects the monstrous potential inside ordinary people - the volcano beneath the sofa cushions. The 2025 mirror reflects the palpable ache of losing someone who sleeps inches away but feels a continent distant. They both speaks of the unsettling truth: love does not die spectacularly or silently but according to the nature of the lovers themselves. The Roses are two couples separated by decades, but they are also every couple who has ever discovered that lifelong partnership is less a fairy tale than a long journey across unpredictable terrain.
referential entries: Francis Ford Coppola’s PEGGY SUE GOT MARRIED (1986, 6.2/10); Jay Roach’s TRUMBO (2015, 6.7/10).
较之深井冰夫妇浓墨重彩的“相杀”，我更关心他们何时、何以不再“相爱”——准确地说，是妻子由心冷而攻击至于毁灭的历程。n影片的显性镜头很容易让人同情丈夫：作为战斗力弱势的一方，更作为并不情愿厮杀的一方。他的打击基本出于防守，总是妻子炸一桶火药他跟着点一筒爆竹。他并不主动开启战局；他简直是抓住一切机会推动和解——因为，就像最后一刻那具有象征意味的伸手一样，他依然，始终，原则性地爱着她。n而她用最后的力气把他推开了。nn在两人最后的晚餐中，丈夫还满怀眷恋与希望地劝妻子停战：Sure we’ve been horrible to each other. But we have something. We still do. We haven’t passed any point of no return. 妻子冷冷转过头来：I have.n至于她的 point of no return 是如何被跨过并越甩越远的，影片前半部有平静而细致的铺垫。nn男女主的结识/勾搭过程比较浮夸，而那时已露出各自争强好胜的端倪：拍卖会的定情之战，有如之后离婚大战的预演。事实上整场离婚得以一路拉锯地奔驰向前并最终冲出悬崖，我想主要动力还是房产之争，而非情感牵绊：妻子已然不爱而要争房子，丈夫依然还爱但要争房子。n这时故事的讲述者、夫妻的共同熟人也是男方律师开启了言灵体质：不要和她争，你会不得好死。n因为老人言，a men could never outdo a woman when it came to love and revenge. nn回到七年之内。圣诞夜，妻子精心装点房屋，并为丈夫准备了惊喜礼物。而一如既往埋首于公文的丈夫，惯常地回以冷漠、烦躁、敷衍——直到被妻子软磨硬泡拉到户外，看见自己梦寐以求的汽车，方才心花怒放：“我婚姻真幸福！”自然，没忘记念叨开销，“喂，这是用我们的钱买的……”n在一次讨好丈夫上司的家庭晚宴后，面对妻子的不快和“谄媚”指责，男人坦言：我在意。你不是也想换房子吗？要生活就得习惯妥协。n他们终于搬入了大房子。妻子辞去工作全职理家，而丈夫养家的焦躁与骄傲一以贯之。新房基本可以概括为“共同的梦想，独自的砌筑”：妻子辗转挑选（搜求近一年）、热切争取（房主只愿售给“像过世母亲一样爱它的人”）、悉心改造（六年内不断完善家内布置），而丈夫——哦，他说：“用我的钱买的。”n屋室尽善尽美、孩子学业成就后，女人漫长、辛劳而迷人的生活也就到了头。焦虑无聊的妻子决定以烹饪创业，鼓起勇气寻求支持时，得到的却是一向的不理解与不耐烦。丈夫的人生观基本是这两点：1.你要工作？省省吧。有了我你就什么都不缺。2.你知不知道是谁在工作挣钱？怎么就不懂得体谅和感激呢！n所以当他终于翻看起妻子的合约书（那个他从未上心的承诺），却很快分神拿它打苍蝇，并为自己的剿灭能力沾沾自喜时，他不会注意妻子的面容又黯淡了几分。她的怨气已突破阈值，而他的困惑才刚刚萌芽，她的每一次宣泄都被他当成另一场“深井冰发作”，直到她正式宣布决裂，他简直是悲愤地质疑：你欠我一个合理的解释！n可怜的男主角大概一直有种不明就里被插刀的委屈。而全知视角的观众，则目睹了他从未了解的情冷与心变过程。她并非哪一刻突然“整个人就不好了”；在他的“我很忙-别犯嫌-求亲热”的庸常生活节奏里，她的含盐度越来越高，积重难返。而那些“流泪醒来”的早晨，若教他听说，只怕要成为又一“无稽之谈”。nn律师给的两条出路是：A. 想想对方的好，回去安生过日子；B. 大方干脆地离，房子会有的，好女人也会有的。n丈夫几度试A无果，欲从B却又放不下对房子的执念。说实话我也一度不理解：明明工作收入无忧，对房子也确实不如对方上心，何以冒着被女运动员杀戮的生命危险死缠烂打呢。后来我想，恐怕房子对竞争性格的两人都有“主权”意义——初见时的争夺和解决方式已然埋下伏笔：对于双方志在必得的瓷器，只有婚姻能实现所有权合并，暂时平息纠纷；而当婚姻破裂，唯一的路被堵死，你取我舍、平分式同居皆不可能，谁要谈妥协，“宁愿他幻灭”。n至于爱呢？He loves, but won’t surrender all. She surrendered all, but no longer loves.nn好吧，我很可以不那么自扰，一言蔽之“深井冰夫妇”然后嚼着薯片看美阿姨美大叔SM厮杀——很明显这样的观赏快感也是导演和买票观众的主要期待。但是，掀开那个微小、幽暗、几乎缺乏存在感的井盖，我隐隐怀疑，他们只是许多正常人痛苦、闷骚、疯狂与窒息的心灵的预演。n其中真实的可能，让我黯然神伤。nn印象深刻的一幕：丈夫突发“心绞痛”，以为自己将不久于人世，挣扎着呼唤“联系我妻子”，一面忍痛留下遗言字条：My love... All I have and all I am I owe to you...（这句后来被她拿作争夺房产的证据。） 但是直到深情表完、痛苦过去、医生确诊只是食道拉伤并予以调笑、狼狈回到大厅在同事（亦即后来的律师）的陪伴／见证下等妻子等到花谢，她都没有来。他失望、困惑、忧伤，对她“如释重负”的心情，尚且一无所知。n在回程列车上，两个老男人略带惆怅地喝酒谈起人生。nA: In your own life by this point, you think you know what’s going to be. But... nB: You don’t know. nA: You don’t know.n
Title: The War of the Roses
Year: 1989
Genre: Comedy, Romance, Drama
Country: USA
Language: English
Director: Danny DeVito
Screenwriter: Michael Leeson
based on the novel by Warren Adler
Composer: David Newman
Cinematographer: Stephen H. Burum
Editor: Lynzee Klingman
Cast:
Michael Douglas
Kathleen Turner
Danny DeVito
Marianne Sägerbrecht
Sean Astin
Heather Fairfield
G.D. Spradlin
Peter Donat
Dan Castellaneta
Peter Hansen
Rating: 7.6/10
Title: The Roses
Year: 2025
Genre: Comedy
Country: UK, USA, Australia
Language: English
Director: Jay Roach
Screenwriter: Tony McNamara
based on the novel by Warren Adler
Composer: Theodore Shapiro
Cinematographer: Florian Hoffmeister
Editor: Jon Poll
Cast:
Olivia Colman
Benedict Cumberbatch
Kate McKinnon
Andy Samberg
Ncuti Gatwa
Sunita Mani
Zoë Chao
Jamie Demetriou
Delaney Quinn
Hala Finley
Ollie Robinson
Wells Rappaport
Allison Janney
Caroline Partridge
Rating: 6.8/10
There are films about marriage, films about divorce, and then there are films in which marriage and divorce are simply two chapters of the same disaster. THE WAR OF THE ROSES belongs decisively to the latter category. Watching it - especially alongside its 2025 reimagining, Jay Roach’s THE ROSES - I find myself thinking that Hollywood has given us many love stories, many tragedies, and many comedies, but very few works that manage to mix all three by going the whole hog to see what happens when two people who once murmured “forever” to each other begin shouting “not if you were the last human on earth.” The Roses, in either incarnation, do not engage in tiffs. They wage wars from the ground up.
THE WAR OF THE ROSES, marking DeVito’s second bid in the director’s chair, arrives with the swagger of a general who knows the battle is already won. It is bold, viciously funny, and entirely uninterested in emotional restraint. Douglas and Turner (starring in their third film together following Robert Zemeckis’ ROMANCING THE STONE 1984 and its sequel THE JEWEL OF THE NILE 1985, directed by Lewis Teague, both also co-starring DeVito), who transform Oliver and Barbara Rose into domestic gladiators who seem to be performing a dark vaudeville act for the benefit of their house, which is arguably the third and most judgmental character in the story. Their elegant home watches from its doorframes like a bored aristocrat, mildly amused that its owners have devolved into the moral equivalent of two toddlers fighting over a single crayon. The difference is that toddlers usually stop before the chandelier falls.
DeVito directs it all as if staging a Wagner opera composed of petty insults, legal threats, and road-rage bulldozing. Every scene is calibrated to ascend one step higher into absurdity, as though the film were playing a round of emotional Jenga with the audience’s credulity. The joy - and the horror - is that the tower never stabilizes. Something always topples. Something always breaks. And the Roses, rather than stepping back and saying, “Good heavens, what have we become?”, simply collect the scattered pieces and weaponize them.
A salient point is there is poetry in their cruelty, though a very particular kind: the poetry of two people who have known each other too long and too intimately to fight cleanly. Their lines land with surgical precision; their gestures gleam with spite and repulsion. The film is, at its essence, a tragic love story in which the tragedy has been exaggerated into the realm of high comedy. Imagine if Dante had written The Inferno but decided the damned souls should also throw heavy furniture. The comedy is volcanic, but buried under the ash is a dark, shimmering truth: sometimes the passions that bind people together harden, calcify, and eventually cut them to ribbons.
Watching the original, one laughs - sometimes helplessly - and then grows uneasy because the laughter echoes just a little too close to recognizable experience. That is its genius. It is a baroque, over-the-top spectacle that nevertheless taps into the ordinary fear that relationships can decay into something sharp-edged and incomprehensible, and that two people who once shared a private world of inside jokes might one day communicate only through lawyers and acts of micro-terrorism with a homicidal spin.
By contrast, THE ROSES is a whisper where its predecessor is a scream, but a whisper sharpened by confession, disappointment, and the soft thud of modern anxieties. Roach’s film does not imitate the original’s house-leveling operatics. It dissolves them into something subtler, more bruised, and more familiar to contemporary audiences accustomed to juggling careers, self-care, gender politics, and the vague sensation that one should ideally be meditating, hydrating, and becoming a better person at all times.
Theo and Ivy Rose, played by Cumberbatch and Colman, do not so much spiral into madness as drift into an emotional undertow. Their marriage is not destroyed by a grand act of treachery or a particularly flamboyant insult; it’s worn down by increments. These are the Roses of the 21st century where the fairer sex wears the pants, and the object of their divorce battle is their posh, architectonic dwelling designed by Theo but shelled out by Ivy (a high-flying restauranteur). McNamara’s screenplay persuasively teases out miscalculated expectations, misplaced ambitions, and the melancholy knowledge that adult life often resembles a juggling act one didn’t audition for.
Cumberbatch plays Theo with an exquisitely awkward tenderness - a man who wants to be supportive but cannot quite silence the growing panic that he has become, in the novel of his own life, a side character. Colman’s Ivy is luminous and exhausted in equal measure, a woman whose talent lifts her upward while gravity tugs at her ankle in the form of guilt, routine, and the suspicion that somewhere along the way she has stopped recognizing the person who should have been her safest companion. They love each other, yet their love creaks under the weight of everything unsaid. Supporting players are fairly cookie-cutter bells and whistles, though McKinnon’s zany energy and anarchic weirdness is a hit-or-miss ploy and one could beg for more of Janney’s cameo as Ivy’s Manichaean divorce lawyer.
Considering Cumberbatch and Colman’s copious charisma, it is difficult for one to pick sides (unlike in DeVito’s film, Oliver’s namby-pamby yuppie neediness can roundly enable a spectator relating to Barbara’s irrefragable aversion, which is expressed to a nicety by a feisty Turner), and Roach’s film pulls punches apropos of their determination of splitting up, and suffixed a contingent ending that leaves perdition with a sly taste of irony. Where the original version is blazed with high theatricality (the lighting and interior props), the new iteration glows with melancholy lyricism and rationality that keeps the marriage’s disintegration more credible. And yet their conflict can be just as devastating, because it comes wrapped in the aches of modern love - love that wants to survive but is overwhelmed by the practicalities of survival.
In the mass the two films are portraits of the same myth - the myth of romantic permanence - rendered in radically different artistic styles (much in accordance with their zeitgeists). The first portrait is painted with thick strokes of satire, its colors loud, its shapes exaggerated until the faces nearly distort. The second is a watercolor: muted, streamlined but blurred at the edges, and more concerned with the emotional atmosphere than the physical details.
What makes the comparison fascinating is that both films are, in their own ways, adequately honest. DeVito’s film speaks truth through exaggeration. It shouts that material success, social image, and domestic perfection are not shields against emotional emptiness whereas Roach’s film speaks truth through restraint. It mutters that modern marriage is not undone by firestorms but by gusts of emotional weather - so faint and so frequent that the couple barely notices until the foundation tilts.
And so, when the credits roll on both films, what remains is not despair but a strange sense of recognition, as though each film has held up a mirror tinged with irony. The 1989 mirror reflects the monstrous potential inside ordinary people - the volcano beneath the sofa cushions. The 2025 mirror reflects the palpable ache of losing someone who sleeps inches away but feels a continent distant. They both speaks of the unsettling truth: love does not die spectacularly or silently but according to the nature of the lovers themselves. The Roses are two couples separated by decades, but they are also every couple who has ever discovered that lifelong partnership is less a fairy tale than a long journey across unpredictable terrain.
referential entries: Francis Ford Coppola’s PEGGY SUE GOT MARRIED (1986, 6.2/10); Jay Roach’s TRUMBO (2015, 6.7/10).
两个人在一起，是互相发现对方与众不同的特质， 否则你怎么吸引她，她怎么吸引你？
努力工作，就是努力把自己往千篇一律的标准上削足适履，爱来自于独特，同一个阶层的人，都一个样，凭什么选择你奥利弗而不选择加文？你希望你的爱人是独特的，你自己首先也要独特啊，奥利弗·肉丝先生结婚前是独特而有趣的，结婚后哪怕是和媳妇儿闹别扭的方式也沦落的毫无想象力，还毫不自知。
她不要平分财产，只要那个房子，完全是因为那个房子是她用了6个月装修，再用了200个周末装饰，独一无二属于她个人的style，她宁愿要房子，都不要丈夫，难道丈夫就不能理解吗？
钱？丈夫口口声声说他赚钱养活了所有人，让她买了几百双鞋子，却忘了在他事业没有起步的那段时日，是她当服务员补贴一家的生活，还能攒下钱给他买古董轿车，她根本不需要他的钱，就像山东强奸案，收了你的彩礼，你就能强奸那个人？
很难给这个电影下一个定义。如果说这是一部类似《克莱默夫妇》那样的伦理片并不准确；如果说这是一部类似于《史密斯夫妇》那样的动作片也不合适。应该说这是一部七分伦理，三分动作，又有些黑色的剧情片比较准确。
第一次知道这个片子是在一本发黄了的《环球银幕画刊》上，那是十年以前的事情了。当时对于西方电影所之甚少，因此并不认识大名鼎鼎的迈克尔·道格拉斯，当然就更不认识凯瑟琳·特纳以及站着都不及道格拉斯坐着高的丹尼•德維托（他还是本片的导演）。不过当时我仍然对诡异的剧情所吸引，留下了印象。
大概剧情是这样的：加维律师的办公室里，一个青年正要请加维做自己的离婚代理。加维没有明确答复，而是娓娓道来一个他耳闻目睹的故事……芭芭拉和奥利弗在许多人的眼里是一对相敬如宾、令人羡慕的爱人。结婚后的芭芭拉把主要精力放在照顾孩子、料理家务上，奥利弗则在律师行业名声显赫。但当芭芭拉和奥利弗有了自己的豪宅后，爱情的乐章却出现了不和谐音符……。省略号省略了精彩的部分，我没有权利将它们透露给还没有看过本片的朋友，我只能说，这部分是名副其实的战争。
关于婚姻，我没有经历过，本没有发言权，不过听来的看来的婚姻倒不少，算是间接经验，也就不揣浅薄，在这里说一说。上大学的时候，有一次学校组织辩论赛，题目很有意思：对于婚姻，是爱情更重要，还是责任更重要。其实这种事情因人而异，原也没有肯定的答案，不过这背后却透出婚姻的一个问题，就是相爱总是简单，相处太难。就是说结婚容易，而维持婚姻却并不容易，随着时间的流逝，各种矛盾，问题纷至沓来，不断堆积终于成为了西方人所说的“七年之痒”。
维持一个已经名存实亡的婚姻，对于在集体主义教育下长大，忍耐力超强的中国人来讲，要比极端个人主义的西方人更容易，西方人每一次去教堂结婚，所发的誓言都是真诚的，而当他们感到爱情没有了，就分道扬镳，然后再去相爱，再去发誓。而中国人，却被家庭，孩子，舆论，种种因素羁绊，勉强维持。尽管处理方式不同，但是七年之痒同样存在，也许在中国人看来，电影中的战争是那样的荒诞，不可理喻，可实际上，和罗斯夫妇处于相同境况的人们，这样的战争又不知道已经在他们的脑海中反复上演过多少次了，只不过隐忍的中国人，很少敢于将心中的想法实施罢了，而电影也仅仅是将脑海中的想象具像化了而已。电影，毕竟是源于生活高于生活的艺术。
男女之间相处，总是有一个人处于强势地位，这是和谐的保证。如果二人性格，能力势均力敌的话，恐怕就相持不下，很难维系了。聪明的男人总是会选择比他们弱的女人为妻，对于那些女强人，就敬而远之了。比如卫西理，清楚的认识到斯佳丽的强大不是他所能驾御的，因此转而选择温柔的梅兰妮，而把斯佳丽留给了更为强悍的瑞德船长。再比如小说《侠客行》里面，梅芳姑问石清，她的武功不如闵柔高吗？她的女红，烹饪不如闵柔好吗？为什么石清舍她而选闵柔？石清说：“你样样比闵柔强，不但比她强，比我都强……”这就是聪明的男人的答案，他不会选择一个比他更加优秀的女人，除非他拥有包容一切的胸怀和自我牺牲的精神。
奥利弗·罗斯的错误就在于他没有了解妻子到底是什么样的人，他没有意识到作为一个力量型体操运动员出身的芭芭拉有多么强悍。前车之鉴，后世之师。因此忠告各位王老五，如果你没有为爱牺牲一切的觉悟，那么就去选择一个有为爱牺牲一切觉悟的女人，否则，罗斯夫妇的故事就有可能发生在你的身上。这个忠告让我们共勉。
影片的开始让人难以忘怀，雨中的凯瑟琳·特纳曲线毕露，美不胜收……
萨特和伏波娃的爱情维系了一生却无缘婚姻，显然，这要靠高度的精神信仰和洞悉人性后的宽容淡定去支撑，若无这两个前提，再热烈的爱情终会“春 梦了无痕”。毕竟世界上仅有过一对萨特和伏波娃。爱情和婚姻始终无法最终统一，很多致力于此的专家学者就此各抒己见，尝试寻找一个两全其美的方式。
2007年，德国一位女市长提出一项石破天惊的提议：“婚姻七年制。”已经历过两次婚姻（第二次婚姻恰好七年）的她现身说法，大力宣扬婚姻七年制的好处，虽年过五十仍风姿绰约饱含活力。我国的两性学家李银河也曾提出过类似的建议，结果遭到资深业内人士和民间传统势力的一通炮轰，我想王小波若还在世，肯定不会让李银河捅这个马蜂窝，有时候就是这样，被蛰的是你，出尽风头的却是他人。
扯远了，众所周知，当下婚姻的促成无非是爱情或功利，也有心灰意冷后随便拉一个的。功利性质的婚姻最终或平淡或决裂，这完全不必大惊小怪，若能白头到老，的确难能可贵，若是半途搁浅，似乎也属于正常结果，不会引起同情。相反，因爱情而缔结婚姻的夫妇，若出现先平淡后决裂的局面，便难免令世人感喟，但像电影《罗斯夫妇的战争》（时光网叫《错对冤家》，豆瓣网叫《玫瑰战争》，我取英文直译）中因决裂而拼得鱼死网破就有些令人费解了。也许在现实生活中，功利型的婚姻比爱情型的婚姻更具有客观实际的稳定性。
看完此片，男性观众可能会同时想到女人的嬗变，叹服于圣人洞若观火般透彻的解读——“惟小人与女子难养也”，殊不知这句话被历朝历代出于各种目的，或断章取义，或泄愤曲解，不论如何，惟一可明确的是，以男性的视角来观察和品评女性，古今中外莫不如是。
影片把罗斯夫妇的家庭矛盾以一种歇斯底里的疯狂方式演绎，嘲讽和抨击的味道很浓，一个本来温馨的港湾最后沦为两人的恐怖地狱，罗斯先生到死都不明白太太为何如此绝情，一部典型的黑色幽默电影。
现实很多例子表明，夫妻往往可以共苦，却不能同甘，影片中罗斯夫妇也是如此，捉襟见肘的窘迫生活过得有滋有味，富裕后却矛盾频生，罗斯先生忙于巴结领导图谋升迁，芭芭拉也忙于生意，使自身价值得以充分体现。妻子渐渐看不惯丈夫一味的谄媚嘴脸和工作狂态度，丈夫则渐渐忽视妻子的情感需要，并对妻子的自我个性嗤之以鼻。
片中很多情节都显示了芭芭拉是一个虚荣心极强的完美主义者，拍卖会上的势在必得，房子布置的井然有序等等，这些小细节都为后来她近乎变态的癫狂表现作了有力的铺垫。故事发展循序渐进，冲突矛盾衔接自然。迈克尔·道格拉斯的演技更是可圈可点，把一个心有不甘誓死捍卫家庭的中年男人演绎的入木三分。
电影是1989年拍的，虽相隔21年，但影片里无处不在的真实却依然让今人看得心惊胆战。该片重点表现出，生活的变化可以波及和影响到夫妻二人的内心变化，然后产生各种分歧，直到相互敌视，最后同归于尽。在一个浮躁且变迁的社会里，婚姻的不稳定性也会急剧加深。影片用略显夸张和典型的黑色幽默来渲染这场夫妻大战，以此揭示人性的复杂，与《美国丽人》的社会影响、外来诱惑等多重作用带来的死亡是两种截然不同的悲剧效果。前者一味的夸大女人的嬗变及绝情，把男人刻画成家庭事业兼顾、爱情友情并重的好男人；后者则着重男人的本性，把男人内心孤单脆弱的一面示人。相比来说，《罗斯夫妇的战争》更纯粹更理想化，《美国丽人》更现实更客观。
影片的结尾跟《美丽心灵的永恒阳光》颇有几分神似，女人如此情绪化，爱情如此短暂，婚姻如此可怕，可男人仍然需要女人，爱情仍然值得追寻，婚姻仍然值得坚守。片中夫妇二人的朋友盖文始终以一个置身事外的人来看待这场战争，他是导演安排的一个智慧的化身，他的父母相爱一生，他的婚姻正幸福美满，与罗斯夫妇恰好相反。婚姻，要么互相忍让，要么兵戎相见。
智者的婚姻寿终正寝，愚者的婚姻两败俱伤。
较之深井冰夫妇浓墨重彩的“相杀”，我更关心他们何时、何以不再“相爱”——准确地说，是妻子由心冷而攻击至于毁灭的历程。n影片的显性镜头很容易让人同情丈夫：作为战斗力弱势的一方，更作为并不情愿厮杀的一方。他的打击基本出于防守，总是妻子炸一桶火药他跟着点一筒爆竹。他并不主动开启战局；他简直是抓住一切机会推动和解——因为，就像最后一刻那具有象征意味的伸手一样，他依然，始终，原则性地爱着她。n而她用最后的力气把他推开了。nn在两人最后的晚餐中，丈夫还满怀眷恋与希望地劝妻子停战：Sure we’ve been horrible to each other. But we have something. We still do. We haven’t passed any point of no return. 妻子冷冷转过头来：I have.n至于她的 point of no return 是如何被跨过并越甩越远的，影片前半部有平静而细致的铺垫。nn男女主的结识/勾搭过程比较浮夸，而那时已露出各自争强好胜的端倪：拍卖会的定情之战，有如之后离婚大战的预演。事实上整场离婚得以一路拉锯地奔驰向前并最终冲出悬崖，我想主要动力还是房产之争，而非情感牵绊：妻子已然不爱而要争房子，丈夫依然还爱但要争房子。n这时故事的讲述者、夫妻的共同熟人也是男方律师开启了言灵体质：不要和她争，你会不得好死。n因为老人言，a men could never outdo a woman when it came to love and revenge. nn回到七年之内。圣诞夜，妻子精心装点房屋，并为丈夫准备了惊喜礼物。而一如既往埋首于公文的丈夫，惯常地回以冷漠、烦躁、敷衍——直到被妻子软磨硬泡拉到户外，看见自己梦寐以求的汽车，方才心花怒放：“我婚姻真幸福！”自然，没忘记念叨开销，“喂，这是用我们的钱买的……”n在一次讨好丈夫上司的家庭晚宴后，面对妻子的不快和“谄媚”指责，男人坦言：我在意。你不是也想换房子吗？要生活就得习惯妥协。n他们终于搬入了大房子。妻子辞去工作全职理家，而丈夫养家的焦躁与骄傲一以贯之。新房基本可以概括为“共同的梦想，独自的砌筑”：妻子辗转挑选（搜求近一年）、热切争取（房主只愿售给“像过世母亲一样爱它的人”）、悉心改造（六年内不断完善家内布置），而丈夫——哦，他说：“用我的钱买的。”n屋室尽善尽美、孩子学业成就后，女人漫长、辛劳而迷人的生活也就到了头。焦虑无聊的妻子决定以烹饪创业，鼓起勇气寻求支持时，得到的却是一向的不理解与不耐烦。丈夫的人生观基本是这两点：1.你要工作？省省吧。有了我你就什么都不缺。2.你知不知道是谁在工作挣钱？怎么就不懂得体谅和感激呢！n所以当他终于翻看起妻子的合约书（那个他从未上心的承诺），却很快分神拿它打苍蝇，并为自己的剿灭能力沾沾自喜时，他不会注意妻子的面容又黯淡了几分。她的怨气已突破阈值，而他的困惑才刚刚萌芽，她的每一次宣泄都被他当成另一场“深井冰发作”，直到她正式宣布决裂，他简直是悲愤地质疑：你欠我一个合理的解释！n可怜的男主角大概一直有种不明就里被插刀的委屈。而全知视角的观众，则目睹了他从未了解的情冷与心变过程。她并非哪一刻突然“整个人就不好了”；在他的“我很忙-别犯嫌-求亲热”的庸常生活节奏里，她的含盐度越来越高，积重难返。而那些“流泪醒来”的早晨，若教他听说，只怕要成为又一“无稽之谈”。nn律师给的两条出路是：A. 想想对方的好，回去安生过日子；B. 大方干脆地离，房子会有的，好女人也会有的。n丈夫几度试A无果，欲从B却又放不下对房子的执念。说实话我也一度不理解：明明工作收入无忧，对房子也确实不如对方上心，何以冒着被女运动员杀戮的生命危险死缠烂打呢。后来我想，恐怕房子对竞争性格的两人都有“主权”意义——初见时的争夺和解决方式已然埋下伏笔：对于双方志在必得的瓷器，只有婚姻能实现所有权合并，暂时平息纠纷；而当婚姻破裂，唯一的路被堵死，你取我舍、平分式同居皆不可能，谁要谈妥协，“宁愿他幻灭”。n至于爱呢？He loves, but won’t surrender all. She surrendered all, but no longer loves.nn好吧，我很可以不那么自扰，一言蔽之“深井冰夫妇”然后嚼着薯片看美阿姨美大叔SM厮杀——很明显这样的观赏快感也是导演和买票观众的主要期待。但是，掀开那个微小、幽暗、几乎缺乏存在感的井盖，我隐隐怀疑，他们只是许多正常人痛苦、闷骚、疯狂与窒息的心灵的预演。n其中真实的可能，让我黯然神伤。nn印象深刻的一幕：丈夫突发“心绞痛”，以为自己将不久于人世，挣扎着呼唤“联系我妻子”，一面忍痛留下遗言字条：My love... All I have and all I am I owe to you...（这句后来被她拿作争夺房产的证据。） 但是直到深情表完、痛苦过去、医生确诊只是食道拉伤并予以调笑、狼狈回到大厅在同事（亦即后来的律师）的陪伴／见证下等妻子等到花谢，她都没有来。他失望、困惑、忧伤，对她“如释重负”的心情，尚且一无所知。n在回程列车上，两个老男人略带惆怅地喝酒谈起人生。nA: In your own life by this point, you think you know what’s going to be. But... nB: You don’t know. nA: You don’t know.n