Back in the 70s, Robert Benton directed Meryl Streep and Dustin Hoffman in Kramer vs Kramer, the first big screen film that focused on divorce. But in Marriage Story, Director, Noah Baumbach, takes divorce and its sorrows to a grueling albeit brilliant in-your-face level.
Enter Nicole (Scarlett Johansson) who gave up being a movie star in Los Angeles to launch a theatre company with her husband, Charlie (Adam Driver) in Manhattan. Nicole is a solid citizen, a good listener, but more importantly she knows how to handle a crisis. She’s a wife and a mother who actually gets down on the floor to play with her son, Henry (Azhy Robertson). Yes, Nicole is the nucleus of the family.
Her husband Charlie (Driver) is at time self-absorbed but he’s self-sufficient and self-made. He also cries at movies. Charlie can be competitive, but he loves being a dad, until one day he finds himself sleeping on the sofa, going to mediation, and headed for divorce. None of which he ordered.
In this thought-provoking (and if you’ve been through divorce) story we’re reminded that there is no right or wrong here. Nicole and Charlie’s parting plays out with the same sweet sorrow, the same he said/she said, the who-gets-what division, the trying to move the child out of state, and most certainly the unfairness that in the end, someone will have to compromise far greater in order to reach a resolve. Ouch.
It’s nice to see Johansson step out of ‘Avengerish’ films and return to more complex relationships in films (Vicky, Christina, Barcelona, Lost in Translation ) where she can hold a look of concern and unraveling on her cupid-like-face while attempting to dissect her emotional damage.
Her lawyer (played flawlessly-evil by Laura Dern) has a theory that men ravish women in the beginning and then get bored when wives have babies. Dern plays a seasoned lawyer or a man hater, depending how you look at it, while Driver’s character, Charlie, is represented by a more ‘Mister Rogers’ type attorney (Alan Alda). Then there’s Jay (Ray Liotta) a bulldog counselor with a fangs-out-in-court approach. Both attorneys raise a silent audience question: Despite how tough/soft an attorney is, isn’t it about the couple trying to negotiate kindly outside of the courtroom? Because if you can’t reach a decision calmly, you’ll be hiring detectives, hiding money, and creating lies to satisfy a truth that doesn’t exist (she drinks, he does drugs, whatever).
How about this: Love your child more than you hate each other.
When comparing divorce to death, divorce is an act of hope. If death is death, divorce is freedom to start anew. Or in other words, you will rise up from the fetal position on the sofa, to live and possibly love, again. But in the meantime, a woman divorcing has to succumb to the fact that she’s built her life around one man and lost her identity in the process.
Should you find yourself in a situation where one wants out of the marriage and the other doesn’t, you have the added burden of glass-stepping their anger. The wounded spouse might stop at nothing to get what they want. Except they can’t get what they want since the other spouse no longer wants them.
What we learn from Nicole and Charlie is that sometimes sacrifice for ‘the sake of the kids’ come in larger doses during a divorce…then it ever did during the marriage.
Marriage Story is an exhausting one…a volatile mix of contradictions, and a small movie that turns out to be a very big movie. It’s occasional run-on monologue would translate well to the Broadway stage. And, Randy Newman’s soundtrack adds a feel-good reminder to what vows were once promised.
One might imagine the only way to write and direct a script like this would be to have experienced it firsthand. Baumbach was married to Jennifer Jason Leigh, who divorced him when their child was just a baby. He’s since partnered with Greta Gerwig. And that’s the point. It would take incredible growth to emerge from the dark side and tell this intricate and intimate tale of survival. It would take a new partner and a new footing to deliver a film this solid about the hindsight of divorce.
If you’re up for an emotional unraveling, then Marriage Story is a beautiful study. But if you don’t choose to see it, you can be sure you’ll see Noah Baumbach, Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson nominated for Oscars. This story might be about a not-so-failed marriage, but it’s a perfect four tiaras from the Screen Queen.