★★★★
A stage director and his actor wife struggle through a gruelling, coast-to-coast divorce that pushes them to their personal and creative extremes.
Classification: 15
Love. Many films have been made about love stories, sweeping romantic dramas of great emotional weight, hilariously sweet adventures between young lovers as they navigate life. Set in big cities with big ideas on what it means to be in love, these stories burrow deep of the hearts of the audience and make them believe in soulmates and true love. Noah Baumbach's latest film, however, doesn't revolve around love or fantasies but instead is an emotional, cathartic and autobiographical examination of a marriage. Baumbach, an American film director who was divorced by his former wife Jennifer Jason Leigh are the obvious inspirations for the characters of Charlie and Nicole Barber. Marriage Story is a film that definitely feels like an exercise where Baumbach is confronting his flaws as a husband and father through Charlie's own journey of self-reflection that speaks to larger themes towards the perspectives between men and women.
The reality of Marriage Story is crafted around the contrasting aesthetics of west coast and east coast artistry. Charlie, an auteur theatre director against Nicole, an actress who spent 10 years in Charlie's theatre after a stint in Hollywood. After getting a pilot offer, Nicole moves back to Los Angeles separates from Charlie and seeks new independence from Charlie's controlling nature by finding her own voice in her life again. Baumbach's direction and script feel entrenched by New York theatre however, long monologues peppered with detailed dialogue, long takes holding on actors faces, framing the action from the complicated emotions revealed and the majority of the film revolving around characters communicating in rooms. A mix of Woody Allen and Stephen Sondheim with how Baumbach builds this faux-realism that the characters exist in, complete with a whimsical score by Randy Newman. As creatives, Charlie and Nicole exist in a realm of emotional manufacturing, seeing these two in their element either in the auteur theatre or in the superficial television show disarms the audience to the true reality of their pain. Which in turn makes the raw scenes of tragedy, anger and heartbreak all the more powerful as Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson deliver outstanding career-best performances.
The now much-memed scene of Charlie and Nicole's blowout fight adheres to the typical histrionics of drama classes, while the performances and context speak to destructive natures of their personalities and divorce proceedings it does feel at times the film is more focused on actor's acting and how dramatic the whole affair can get. Somehow though nothing feels out of place as Baumbach commits to his trademark style, the film is definitely more east coast theatre than west coast vanity as the narrative focuses more on Charlie's emotional isolation, the legal difficulties forcing him to commit to life in Los Angeles against his own desires. The film fixates on how divorce shatters the notions we can have about ourself, as Charlie a confident, successful artist who believed himself to be the head of a happy New York family has to confront the worst parts of himself when everything about that life is put under the microscope, poked and prodded by divorce lawyers.
The film opens with two voiceover monologues from the leads over images of the character's marriages, Adam Driver, Scarlett Johansson and Noah Baumbach start this film in a place of love and memory. Although it gets nasty and bitter as their divorce case wanes on, Baumbach doesn't want Marriage Story to be a spiteful bitter revenge tale where he can throw potshots at Jennifer Jason Leigh and her lawyer. The shifting perspectives are interesting as the beginning, giving more of a spotlight to Johansson's Nicole as if Baumbach through her monologues and scenes with Laura Dern and Julie Hagerty is directly addressing the failures of men who can't recognise their spouses as equals. Marriage Story through the vicious beast of the divorce courts recognises the hypocritical nature of the patriarchy both through an outstanding monologue from Laura Dern's incredibly fabulous (seriously fabulous) character of Nora Fanshaw, Nicole's lawyer and Charlie's own frustrated self-destructive behaviour. It can feel at moments that all your sympathy goes to either Nicole or to Charlie but as the film goes on the film stays with Charlie for much longer either as it was Baumbach's own experiences forming the story or representative of the character's nature of not being unable to understand his own situation. Nicole through the separation has newfound independence in her personal and professional lives, something that Charlie and we the audience only catch brief glimpses of almost as if Charlie himself cannot comprehend Nicole finding success outside of his influence and therefore outright denies it.
Nicole at times can seem like a villain to Charlie's story but the truth is that they are made villains by each other and everyone else. In fact even though Laura Dern and Ray Liotta as the vitriolic divorce lawyers are an easy target for condemnation but they too are just cogs in the destructive cycles of society. No one is a true villain but a victim to themselves as Marriage Story really digs deep to the bullshit of the whole process to divorce and the idea there has to be a 'winner'. Personal moments between the pair earlier in the film, where a minor mistake is made or an offhand comment becomes another grenade for Dern or Liotta to lob into the battlefield of the court. It's raw and uncomfortable especially in the moments where it's clear that Charlie and Nicole still care for each other and just want what's best for their son Henry. Everyone seems to not want an ugly protracted divorce but it slowly develops into one due to the stubbornness of each character in the custody battle, putting their own interests before their child.
Crumbling marriages are a commodity with emotional psychological strife and everything you thought you knew about yourself is torn apart by these vultures. Liotta's brash character of Jay Marotta, Charlie's attorney even states that he will hate him by the end because of what he represents, and what he represents is the post mortem of Charlie's own sense of his life. Charlie, Nicole and Henry, lived and worked in New York City, Charlie considered them a "New York" family, Nicole's family living in Lose Angeles, however, meant certain life events for the Barbers took place there though. Their wedding, the birth of their child, holidays and celebrations as Charlie embraced Nicole's mother and sister as his own, Driver's chemistry both with Julie Hagerty and Merritt Wever as Nicole's mother and sister, being outstanding especially in the scene where he is awkwardly served divorce papers. Now because of this, the Barbers are considered a "Los Angeles" family meaning the courts favour Nicole's case of having Henry stay and live with her in California, essentially stating that the life Charlie believed he had was a farce in the eyes of a court deciding the legitimacy of his own existence as a husband and father. Every new development into the jowls of the divorce machine has Charlie face hypocrisies in logic, frustrating double standards and everything he thought to understand about his own life is now constantly being reinterpreted, his own identity crumbling as anger and regret, leave him alone in an empty apartment devoid of success and love, Driver excellently capturing this empty man in an empty shell.
There is a deep acerbic wit to Marriage Story, so much comedy is derived from the human errors in trying to navigate these awkward difficult waters of your life falling apart. The hypocrisies of the court's systems made sadly hilarious through Alan Alda's kind-hearted performance as Bert Spitz, Charlie's first divorce attorney. Martha Kelly's appearance as a custody evaluator is so dry and hilarious as she silently observes Driver's slowly increasing neuroticism over the visit that leads to him accidentally slicing his arm open in an attempt to tell a family anecdote. Everything thing feels like 10 steps backwards, one step forward then another five steps back just to make sure. Get an apartment to show you want to be near your son, but that apartment then questions whether you have New York residence, but don't rent out that apartment because you need to prove New York residence so you need to pay rent on two apartments in two different states, plus a 10,000 dollar retainer for your own lawyer plus paying for half of your wife's lawyer. Your life savings are drained because everyone needs a cut and you just have to laugh at the absurdity of it all as you wonder if anything of note was actually accomplished. Charlie and Nicole do grow as people but it's not pleasant, it's ugly but perhaps necessary, it is an emotionally violent crucible that has both characters confront their flaws and toxicity in relation to each other.
The dehumanisation of them both through the divorce system allows them to become new people, in the case of Nicole, it seems to have been to her benefit but was it necessary? Baumbach has Marriage Story speak to the reality of the whole process, some may find the characters pretentious but the Barbers are just another serial number in a divorce court docket, no different from the rest of us. This pain and struggle is universal, to be ripped apart from your life, to have everything you thought you understood change. During their big climactic fight, Nicole bellows "I can't believe I have to know you forever!!" as Charlie punches the wall in a fit of rage, these two are bound to each other as parents to their son, no court will change that. This isn't a bitter street fight they can walk away from when its all over, Charlie and Nicole will have to live with these scars, what they say can't be discarded and what they've done to each other will be with them forever. In the end, Baumbach is able to deliver great beauty to such unpleasantness, showing that love and compassion should always be the way even when we submit to our impatience and outrage. Charlie and Nicole will always have that connection to one another but now their story together is over, however in so many small, intricate ways through memory, heartache and love seen through Baumbach's impeccable script, direction and Driver and Johansson's performances, it never truly will be.
Director: #NoahBaumbach
Cast: #ScarlettJohansson, #AdamDriver, #LauraDern, #AlanAlda, #RayLiotta, #JulieHagerty, #MerrittWever, #WallaceShawn
Release Date: December 6th 2019
Available Exclusively on Netflix
Trailer:
Written review copyright ©CoreyBullochReviews
Images from the Internet Movie Database, Synopsis from Google
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