There is enough in this Marriage Story to love, about people who used to love each other.
“Afterwards I was introduced to the cast and the bear also turned out to be the director. He talked to me and I talked back.” In one of the scenes from the film, Nicole Barber (Scarlett Johansson), tells her lawyer Nora Fanshaw (Laura Dern), how she met her husband Charlie Barber (Adam Driver) ten years ago, during a play.
Marriage Story which starts with a beautiful montage of the two, one from Nicole and other from Charlie’s perspective, is an account of a painful phase in a once happily married couple.
The film is directed by Noah Baumbach who has a sizable amount of experience telling stories of couples struggling to live a happy married life. His 2005 film The Squid and the Whale, told the story of two boys dealing with their parents divorce.
Similarly, in this film, a millennial couple Nicole and Charlie, are going through a divorce after the former finds out that her husband, who directs plays, had slept with the stage manager Mary Ann (Brooke Bloom).
Baumach has taken inspiration from his real life divorce with actor Jennifer Jason Leigh and had said that he has a real connection to this story. The real life parallel is clear as Charlie is also a director, but of theater plays. Nicole is a former film and theater actor known for starring in an adult comedy film, which rose to fame only because she had lifted her top in one of its scenes.
Unlike his 2005 film, which was based on his parents divorce, we don’t get to see the entire painful process through the lense of their eight year old son Henry Barber (Azhy Robertson).
Baumbach’s screenplay is a stripped down barebone account of what it’s like to be divorced. The film is devoid of any background score in almost in its entirety, which helps us into listening to what people have to say and leaving it to the audience, without spoon-feeding.
In one of the best scenes of the film, which lasts for more than ten minutes, we see Nicole visiting Charlie at his house and the two are having a very candid and normal conversation. Only that it’s not as it quickly slips into a vicious quarrel of blame-game which ends with Charlie crying out loud asking for forgiveness.
Some of the funniest scenes in the film are when Charlie is talking to his first lawyer Bert Splitz (Alan Alda); they are, however, layered in sadness.
Johansson delivers one of her career’s best performances in this film, successfully walking a tightrope of a woman going through a lot, without making it melodramatic. It’s hard to imagine the role is played by the same woman who is beating bad guys in Marvel films.
Driver swallows a tough pill as he plays a character that is hard to like because of the ignorant husband/father he is who switches off the room’s light even when his wife is reading a book. He plays it effortlessly, looking vulnerable when he has to, and a prick, when he doesn’t.
The cinematography and the staging of the lead actors are also gelled well with the theme as both Charlie and Nicole are often shown together with a lot of empty space between them in the frame.
3.5/5