The Marriage Story
“Marriage Story” is about two people falling out of love, but remembering when they were in love, and trying to find that love again as a way to move on as they negotiate an increasingly bitter divorce, with a child caught in the middle.
As one of the lawyers involved in the case, played by Alan Alda, puts it, “Divorce is like a death without a body.”
Except that, ultimately, “Marriage Story” celebrates life and the journeys all of us are on. Noah Baumbach is the writerdirector, and to watch such an incisive, deepfeeling script be given life by actors — Adam Driver, Scarlett Johansson and those around them — at the top of their game is to rediscover movies as a powerful medium of personal expression.
There is so much frustration, joy, anger, love and hate in this most human of movies, one of the best of the year. It’s the “Kramer vs. Kramer” of our times. Or Ingmar Bergman’s “Scenes From a Marriage,” which is referenced in the film.
It opens with Charlie (Driver) talking in voiceover about how much he loves Nicole (Johansson) and why she’s so great. Nicole returns the favor with her own voiceover. Turns out their kind words are written down as part of an exercise by their marriage therapist. This is a marriage in trouble.
Nicole was once a promising actress in movies — she’s remembered for showing her breasts in a teen comedy — who met Charlie, an avantgarde theater director in New York. They fell in love, she moved to New York and became a part of Charlie’s theater company, and they got married and had a son, Henry (Azhy Robertson). Ten years into the marriage, Nicole, feeling stifled by Charlie’s selfabsorption and perhaps thinking of her own unrealized dreams, takes a pilot for a mediocre TV series in Los Angeles.
She decides she wants a divorce and takes Henry, now 8, to L.A., and they move in with her mother (Julie Hagerty, who still has those comic chops from “Airplane”). Blindsided, and not understanding the depth of his own failings, Charlie thinks it’s a passing phase. He agrees that they will go through the divorce amicably, without lawyers. He is hoping she won’t go through with it.
But when she hires Nora Fanshaw (Laura Dern, absolutely terrific here), one of the top divorce lawyers in L.A. who specializes in representing women, Charlie is suddenly faced with an uphill, expensive legal battle to gain co-custody of Henry.
The legal case is fought in California, where he must establish residence, even though he is directing a play in New York. The logistics of constant travel and two residences is bad enough on his finances, but to fight Nora he needs a top legal mind — either the $950anhour shark (Ray Liotta) or the kind, grandfatherly, $450anhour Alda.
Sounds like a lot of plot, but it doesn’t feel that way. The story machinations never get in the way of the emotional development of Nicole, who is learning to recognize and value her own selfworth, and Charlie, who begins to realize the true meaning of fatherhood and partnership. This is a characterdriven movie all the way.
Baumbach (“The Squid and the Whale,” “Frances Ha”) is obviously writing from a deep, personal place. There are parallels to his former marriage with the actress Jennifer Jason Leigh — also an L.A.based actress known for a teen comedy (“Fast Times at Ridgemont High”). They had a son, and Baumbach is a New York guy too, a maker of distinct, accomplished independent films.
Although Charlie is a sympathetic character — a good guy, for sure — Baumbach seems to be taking most of the blame for his own failings. I was definitely on Team Nicole.
One scene in the second half encapsulates the movie, when Nicole and Charlie meet to go over some things in Charlie’s apartment, and their benign, respectful banter becomes tense, then outright angry, their frustrations boiling over, and just when it seems like it will turn violent they collapse, sobbing into each other’s arms.
How can people who love each other so much hurt each other so much?