Marriage Story (2019) review - Movie Thoughts (Chapter 35) 💔

Hello everyone,

Today's film was one I was honestly dreading watching. It had gotten a lot of buzz around the most reason awards cycle, yet on premise alone I was not interested at all. But now with the time, I finally stopped procrastinating and explored what all the fuss was about with Marriage Story. I broke all my rules and read up on the film and its reviews back in February, so I was riding in on some really high expectations. Long story short I was very underwhelmed....

(**disclaimer: the following thoughts are 100% my opinion, you do not have to agree with them - film is inherently subjective and everyone's perspective is valid! Also, there are probably spoilers in the following, read at your own risk. Now onto some thoughts....**)

(**2nd disclaimer: so at some point in the 2.5 hours it took me to write this essay, I decided I would throw all caution out the window and spew some major word vomit. It would seem I had a lot of thoughts, I apologise for none of them but I am sorry this is so long!!!**)

Source: IMDB

Anyone who has been through a divorce will probably tell you it is hell. Versions of grief and heartbreak at the ending of a once beautiful love, maybe some yelling and crying, and eventually hammering out a legal settlement both parties sign to ink the conclusion of that particular life chapter. That’s exactly what acclaimed writer/director Noah Baumbach offers an audience with his take on a particularly bumpy split; covering all the emotion of cordial separation up to the full-on ‘yelling shit we don’t mean’ phase. Stage director Charlie Barber (Adam Driver) and his actor wife Nicole (Scarlett Johansson) come to grips with a demanding coast-to-coast divorce that pushes them and their family to breaking point. Nominated for six Academy Awards, this empathetic look inside the breakdown of a marriage and a family trying to stay together despite the emotional toll felt plainly by the numbers. As a film, everything worked fine; an experienced cast and creative team wouldn’t necessarily do anything outright awful, but it ended up lacking that extra spark to really get into audiences’ soul.

Delivering on what it promised to be, this film was essentially a character study of how people act during the divorce process. In foregrounding the visceral emotional layers and perspectives involved in that process, there’s an interesting potential for the narrative to be read, and thus processed, in multiple different ways. If you identify with Nicole, or with Charlie, or you were a kid in the middle like Henry (Azhy Robertson) or an emotional support/outsider like Cassie (Merritt Weaver); the emotional resonance of what transpired is going to change. Outside that personal hook, there was a very clinical dissection of the standard emotional checkpoints that inevitably emerge during divorce.

Painful acceptance that the divorce was actually happening; especially on Charlie’s end. Nicole was stoic around people, but cried into her pillow when the doors were closed. The more introspective ideas of how you untangle your life from someone you’re so intrinsically linked to and realizing the loss of self-identity within being married; the typical ‘I don’t know who I am anymore’ shtick. Working with a significant other where both your personal and professional life are molded with that person was a much-needed complication to move the narrative out of complete beige territory. Baumbach also made sure to foreground that there were issues on both sides and no one party was completely to blame for the situation. Whether Charlie’s disloyal ‘extra-marital relations’ were subjectively comparable to Nicole’s reckless hack of Charlie’s emails is a whole other conversation, but neither party were shown to be a saint without reproach. All the emotional caveats were present with melancholic intensity; to the point where it began to feel like a ticking time bomb that would eventually explode.

Throughout the film, Henry is front and centre; a compelling reminder that divorce is often hardest on children. Although he doesn’t really refer to it in exact terms, audiences could see that Henry was just being an energetic 8 year old about it all despite both his parents’ desire to make sure he didn’t feel like anything was going to change; they both still loved him even if they stopped loving each other to be married. The poignancy of this was greatest in the beautiful moment where Henry found Nicole’s letter from the opening mediation session and read with it to Charlie. Not only is it a great carry through of Henry’s reading prowess, but it was so much more emotionally charged than if Charlie had seen it alone. Within the legality of the divorce, Henry came dangerously close to being a bargaining chip and thus breaking rule number 1 of divorce – do not bring kids into the middle. But the pure love in that moment of Henry in a teary-eyed Charlie and Nicole crying in the doorway behind them was such a beautiful resolution to their struggle left audiences with the hope that everything was going to be OK.

Baumbach’s artful direction was clear and at times poetically symbolic. The opening scene provided an engaging and lengthy description of the Barber marriage dynamic with a beautifully edited montage of domestic life. Detail oriented and lacking the sweeping grand statements one would expect in a love letter, it was a clever combination of visual exposition and voiceover that immediately dropped audiences in the middle of the emotional turmoil. Jennifer Lame’s understated editing also helped to convey the push and pull of tension in the narrative. Baumbach was particularly clever in Nicole’s first meeting with divorce attorney Nora (Laura Dern) in mainly focusing the camera on Johansson’s face and eyes as she let go of her tears and emotional baggage. The long monologue was working hard to convey Nicole’s musings but such an intimate camera angle amped up the visceral gutpunch of what she was saying out loud, probably for the first time. A similar idea was present in a conversation between wise retired lawyer Bert (Alan Alda) and Charlie where intermittent cuts to the clock and back to Charlie’s worried face were picked up by Bert’s dialogue as a poignant moment of exposing Charlie’s deep-seeded worry that he’s going to lose precious time with his kid. Baumbach was able to accent certain moments in an intuitive way that made them all the more impactful.

The complex script written by Baumbach, allegedly from personal experience, had great moments. In particular, the letters Nicole and Charlie wrote for each other during mediation were gorgeously written and had a handy dual function as exposition for the opening and heartwarming closure for the end. There was a plurality of perspective throughout with both Nicole and Charlie’s feelings throughout the process on full display, as well as injections of theatre gossip as an exposition device to highlight Charlie and Nicole’s personal/professional relationship hybrid from an observer perspective. But the best written passage of the whole film was Nora’s impassioned rant to Nicole while she’s prepping for her evaluator interview. Harsh truths aside, Dern’s vivacious delivery had excellent panache that made those words stand out above the rest.

However, there were inconsistency issues with this film that took the shine right off despite strong foundations. For much of the middle section, Charlie and Nicole danced around the root of their issues with awkward and flimsy conversations that made sense, but slowed the pace of everything right down. Parts of the Halloween scenes were boring, and it really lost its oomph for a while before moments like the phone call and developments prior to court warranted investment again. The entire evaluator sequence at Charlie’s residence was uncomfortable, awkward and weird, with nowhere near enough impact to warrant it even being in the film at all. The same could be said for the two musical numbers near the end; why were they there? While Nicole’s was an enjoyable, light-hearted moment with her family that had some context, Charlie’s rendition of ‘Being Alive’ was oddly placed. Despite the fact that singing Sondheim to a bunch of theatre nerds was the most predictable song choice ever, it had little lead-in or warning before that first famous line and went on for too long for it to be appropriately self-pitying. There was no more character development in either of those moments that hadn’t already been discussed earlier, so their inclusion was just unnecessary.

Even Randy Newman’s quaint and bouncy score didn’t really add much to the overall atmosphere inserted in random spots that were more off-putting than warm. For all the presence of structure, dialogue and character development, much of this film wasn’t that compelling. Patchy writing that darted between thought-provoking introspection and stodgy sections of awkward, bland dialogue took the wind right of the momentum and left what might have been a cohesively tense piece of storytelling a steaming pile of mediocrity.

If the weaker points of this film were boring and uninspired, the best scenes were perfectly paced and dramatically enticing. The courtroom scene where rude lawyer shark Jay Marotta (Ray Liotta) and lady boss Nora went head to head exposed all of Charlie and Nicole’s skeletons blow for blow. Exposing the ugly inevitability of divorces becoming a fight where everyone’s dirty laundry could be weaponized was an interesting idea to watch play out, but it also had a powerful secondary use in increasing the underlying tension between Charlie and Nicole to a sort of breaking point.

What quickly followed was the confrontation scene where Johansson and Driver produced some of their best work. Aside from a completely unnecessary wall punch, its slow increase in tension that eventually led to a seismic crack and a desperate previously unseen outpouring of emotion from Charlie. The adrenaline of it all was well-balanced with quick cuts between the couple and some earnest writing exposed the darkest of what people can say to one another when they want to hurt them. There were some sentiments they didn’t mean, but who doesn’t say things they don’t mean in the heat of the moment? It was powerful and bombarded not only the partner but the audience with the shadows of truth that essentially crumbled their marriage. The unbearable  levels of passive-aggressiveness that had been blandly laid out in the second act needed somewhere to go, and this anger-fuelled explosion of emotion was an excellent climactic moment within the narrative.

Casting wise, Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver were evenly matched and kept up with each other in intensity and vulnerability with ease. Their chemistry worked, showing genuine care and affection for the other whilst conveying the complexities of their own character. But these roles were challenges experienced dramatic actors like them should thrive on, so nothing about their performances were particularly surprising. It played out with the right amount of sadness, grief and anger that this complex study required to work, but no more than that.

Laura Dern’s charismatic performance as Nora had the most colour and outward eccentricity. A firecracker on screen, her charms and caring as well as her formidable lawyer were enigmatic to watch. A class act that fully deserved her Academy Award win; her final lines were a reminder that no matter what, Nora eats husbands and their lawyers for breakfast for a living.

Quintessentially domestic and surprisingly mediocre, there was no denying that Noah Baumbach’s love letter to divorce had moments of greatness. Largely predictable with all the emotional beats of the divorce process hit with passion and emotional intensity, there’s nowhere to hide when two people falling out of love is your one and only crux. Although there was plenty to love and cry if the story hit a personal nerve, it all was a bit vanilla in the end.

7.5/10, 3 STARS

Thanks for reading,

Love and all the pains of falling out of it, Emily 💔