Product Description

Ten years following its theatrical debut, this astonishing real-life mystery continues to haunt audiences around the world. Winner of the Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival and widely hailed by critics, JUPITER'S WIFE tells the story of Maggie, a beguiling homeless woman living in New York City's Central Park. A captivating jumble of cryptic stories, Maggie claims to be the daughter of the Hollywood movie star Robert Ryan and married to the Roman god Jupiter. The cameras follow Maggie for the next two years, as clue by clue, her enigma is deciphered and an astonishing story is revealed.

DVD Features: Never-Before-Seen Scenes; Filmmaker Biography; Filmmaker Statement; Interactive Menus; Scene Selection

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #93379 in DVD
• Released on: 2004-03-30
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Color, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 87 minutes

Amazon.com
This quietly poignant 1994 documentary chronicles the life of Maggie, an intelligent and enigmatic homeless woman on the streets of New York City, and the relationship she develops with the filmmaker, who attempts to piece together the threads of her life story. The director narrates his search for answers to Maggie's past, using interviews with friends and acquaintances as well as archival footage, from a newsreel of his subject in the 1960s driving a horse-drawn carriage in Central Park to her appearance on a popular game show, all in an effort to understand how this woman ended up homeless. More importantly, director Michel Negroponte takes his cues in unraveling the mystery from Maggie herself, documenting her beliefs that she is the daughter of 1940s matinee idol Robert Ryan and the wife of the ancient Roman god Jupiter. In stark vérité style, the film follows Maggie's search for stability and peace, taking care of stray dogs and finding a place she can call home. Sometimes sad, sometimes hopeful, and startlingly original, Jupiter's Wife is a compassionate real-life portrayal of survival in the modern age. --Robert Lane

Customer Reviews

the real face of "family values".....
C. G. Jung once had a patient who believed she lived on the moon. So Jung met her there. As she realized he took her experiences as valid, she told a sad tale of vampires and isolation. Eventually, this woman who'd been abused as a girl made her way back to earth. Patients like her had taught Jung that the fact of a person's madness did not in any way invalidate the richness and authenticity of their personal mythology.

It would be easy to dismiss--to "shrink"--Maggie Cogan's inner world. Having been homeless in Central Park, she clearly displays the classic symptoms of schizophrenia. She is one of thousands and thousands of women in the U.S. left without adequate health care or even the means to support themselves. As her story gradually emerges, the trained watcher wonders whether her schizophrenic predisposition would have manifested so floridly had she not been subjected to the events described in this film. As a result, she believes she is Hera, wife of Zeus, or in Roman terms, Juno, the wife of Jupiter. She wears a radio strapped to her head so she can be "on the airwaves" tuned in to what's happening. (She finds New York gridlock amusing and avoids it.) The filmmaker decided to listen in and, at one point, not only investigate her past, but contact social services personnel to get her some help. Unfortunately, they showed up with sledgehammers and knocked down her shed. No squatters allowed, even in a New York winter.

When I show this film to graduate students I suggest that they hold it on at least two levels simultaneously--the needless tragedy of this homeless woman's life, and the mythological dimension that surrounds it like an aura--without reducing one to the other and thereby falling into either the shrinkage of reductionism or the romanticization of mental illness. Maggie Cogan is a person with a story to tell, a survivor, an inspiration, and a face of reality behind all the political jingoism to justify spending billions on weapons while Americans starve. She is also a parable. In ancient times storytellers and listeners knew the world remained in balance so long as Jupiter and Juno remained in relations of mutual empowerment. But today, as the plutocracy consumes the planet surface ("plutocracy" from Pluto, god of death and wealth), Jupiter has lost his throne to President Mars, the family in all its versions is on the brink of bankruptcy, and Hera is no longer the Queen of Heaven, maternal image of feminine authority. She lives on relief in New Jersey, where she looks after her puppies, goes without medication, and listens in on the pulse of the times without losing her dignity or her sense of the ironic.

The Story of Maggie
I rarely watch anything twice, but after seeing this film, the story stayed in my mind for a long time and I've watched it again from time to time to fit all the pieces and, more importantly, not to forget. To see how circumstances can change one's life forever and how one copes with things that are too painful to acknowlege is what struck me about this film. It is a tragic film as to what might have been and one can't help but love Maggie with her lyrical speech and laughing manner which mask what lies underneath which even she herself can't bear to remember.

Riviting and Beautiful-Fragile Grace of Life
I saw this documentary at a film festival back home which included a "question and answer" open forum with the film crew. I am still moved by this woman, her story and "this land of many hats, yes we wear them"... This documentary grasps the grace, fragility, and beauty of human existence. Just buy it. You'll buy more for friends. The documentary will "center" you more than any yoga session at the Y will ever do.