“Marriage Story” Review by Josh Davis
January 6, 2020 7:37 am |
From writer/director Noah Baumbach (“The Squid and the Whale” and “Francis Ha”), “Marriage Story” focuses on the painful divorce of Charlie and Nicole.
The couple, played by mega-actors Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson, met while Charlie was a young director and Nicole was fresh off a starring role in a teen comedy ala “American Pie.” They have a son named Henry (Azhy Robertson, “Juliet, Naked”), but drift apart as Nicole lands a pilot in Los Angeles while Charlie prepares to direct a new play on Broadway.
The look and feel of the film is evocative of early Woody Allen, with small hints here and there of 1960s French and Italian arthouse fare. The editing and the placing, the cuts and the close-filmed scenes of handwritten paper, or the tight shots of the red-eyed, makeup free imperfections of someone’s face, lend an earthiness that draws the viewer in. Strong, nuanced performances from the two leads further enhances that feeling, with the finished product appearing tightly orchestrated to seem not at all tightly orchestrated. The movie breathes. It feels full of life and pain.
Baumbach also turns in some of his sharpest writing here, and the movie is often very funny. Consider lines like:
“She was addicted to Tums for a while. It wasn’t nothing. She was up to a tube a day.”
“Isn’t it Tom Petty who said, ‘The Waiting is the Hardest Part’? I represented his wife in the divorce.”
“My client will not be slut shamed for an artistic choice.”
“I asked him to say my phone number and he didn’t know it, so I left … also, I think he slept with the stage manager.”
Early into the film, Nicole moves to Los Angeles with her mother (a very funny Julie Hagerty of “Airplane!” fame) and hires an aggressive Hollywood lawyer played by Laura Dern.
Charlie first opts for more gentle representation (a well-cast Alan Alda), before finally countering with his own shark lawyer, played by a snarling Ray Liotta.
At first the divorce seems like it could be amicable, but as the lawyers get involved things quickly turn ugly. Several scenes in court, for anyone ever involved in an actual divorce, will come off as feeling very real, very well shot and acted and written, and very hard to watch.
In between, there are little glimpses of the life of Charlie and Nicole and their young son, and how each is struggling to cope with their rapidly changing circumstances. These scenes are gorgeously framed, like perfect sad photographs, and Johansson has never been more real or more raw. Driver, meanwhile, is perhaps the best actor working today when it comes to awkward, gloomy stillness.
Also sprinkled throughout are heartbreaking little reminders of what the couple once had: when Nicole, even after the separation, cuts Charlie’s hair or ties his shoes, or how she gently orders lunch for him during a mediation hearing with the lawyers.
In the final third of the movie everything comes to a boil in a sequence when the two leads sit down to finally talk one on one, without lawyers, and it’s absolutely brutal. Driver and Johansson leave nothing on the table. There is snot and spit and tears and screaming and holes punched in the wall. It’s visceral and honest and terrifying.
And it all starts, “I thought we should talk.”
“Marriage Story” is a stunning, heart-wrenching window into modern divorce. It’s a small move with big performances from two actors who led two of the biggest films of 2019.
Adam Driver could very well have earned himself an Oscar with the piano bar scene alone, while Johansson turned in her second award-worthy performance of the year, after “JoJo Rabbit.”
Ultimately, it’s a hard watch, but “Marriage Story” is one of the best films of 2019 and, despite its lack of capes and superpowers and laser swords, likely to be one of the most enduring.
PCL Rating: Tupperware
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: FRESH 🍅
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Tags: Josh Davis, Marriage Story 2019, Marriage Story Movie, Marriage Story Netflix, Noah Baumbach, pop culture leftovers
Categorised in: Movie Reviews
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