Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman star in the modern adaption of the 1989 The War of the Roses originally directed by Danny DeVito, rehashing the age old question: what would you do for love?
The Roses explores all the classic themes of marital conflict and the difficulties of parenthood; unmet desires, unspoken resentment, and jealousy.
Cumberbatch plays Theo Rose, and architect whose life’s work is torn down on live stream after storm sends his model sail crashing through the building’s glass windows. Consequently, his sense of purpose is shattered.
Colman plays Ivy Rose who is the owner and chef of ‘we’ve got crabs’ featuring Salcome’s very own Winkly Prawn Cafe. Ivy achieves overnight success after an outstanding review from an esteemed food critic despite being violently high.
Their relationship naturally sours as Ivy’s success takes her away from the children, placing Theo in the role of stay-at-home dad, frustrated by a constant desire to pursue his work. In contrast, Colman is far from relieved, desperately wanting to get back to her children, waking them up after bedtime to sneak them sweet treats.
The film’s thesis is that the illusion of external success cannot substitute for emotional fufillment.
Recognising Theo’s sacrifice, Ivy desperately attempts to distract Theo from his perceptions of failure and funds the extravagant family home which he designed as an unconscious bid for her love. The house includes all Theo’s ridiculously expensive tastes, serving as an outlet to massage his ego rather than a dream home. Theo also turns their two children into exercise junkies, each receiving scholarships to play sports in a prestigious school.
At a cataclysmic moment, while criticising Theo’s parenting choices, Ivy displays her deep guilt in not having brought up her own children. Colman told the BBC: “From the moment you have a child, you’ll have guilt. This speaks heavily to the difficulty of mothers going back to work, missing out on their children’s upbringing or even if they are at home, and the fear that they are bringing them up with the same flaws they have.
The film represents the idea that wealth comes with sacrifice – the imbalances of life restrict us from bringing up our children, but without work we cannot provide for them. Our personal desires lead us away from eachother, the love for our children cannot be what bonds us, and this love is not enough to keep us from personal desire.
Their “battle of egos” is not just marital bickering exaggerated for comic effect; it is a psychoanalytic death-drive at work. He is killed by his house, the monument to his failed ego, while she is consumed by her beloved hob, the symbol of her professional success. Their deaths are grotesquely poetic: undone by the very objects through which they sought affirmation. Underscoring the psychoanalytic truth that the ego, when overinvested in external symbols, becomes the very instrument of its own undoing.
The film also unsettles the fantasy that children can hold a fractured couple together. While not framed as the “cause” of conflict, the children serve as both economic and psychological stressors. They amplify work–life imbalances, bring divergent parenting styles into conflict, and highlight the impossibility of reconciling personal desire with parental duty. With the children away, what survives of them is love, underlining that their true desire was to be together.
Failing to make divorce work, they kept to their marital vows: till death do us part.
