REVIEW: "Marriage Story" - heartbreaking in all the right ways

“I’m sorry.”

“Me too.”

In an interview with Steven Colbert, actor Adam Driver, who plays Charlie in this film, described Marriage Story as a “love story about divorce”. It seems ironic, right? Divorce is about the end of a relationship and the end of a love story. Yet, Marriage Story proves that notion wrong. It very much is a love story around a divorce. Charlie and Nicole, the leads of the film, don’t rather fall out of love, maybe a part of each of them is still in love, but they have come to the end because they simply can’t work together anymore.

Marriage Story is the latest film from writer/director Noah Baumbach, who has been making movies since 1995, a little under twenty-five years, and has racked up an extremely impressive filmography. He is the writer and director of films like The Squid and the Whale (2005), Frances Ha (2013), Mistress America (2015), and most recently The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) (2017), and he has additional writing credits on two Wes Anderson films, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2005) and Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009). Baumbach is a legend and his talents only show up in greater measure here.

The film feels profoundly personal. Not autobiographical per se, but still personal. He draws from his own emotions, feelings, the stories of people around him, and the things he has done to make Marriage Story. It isn’t anyone person’s story, but an amalgamation of many, which makes it feel even more powerful.

Coming out of Marriage Story, the obvious highlight is Baumbach’s powerful screenplay. He has a real knack for dialogue, something that can be seen in The Meyerowitz Stories. He writes in a way that feels natural: dialogue that seems to be lifted straight from real life. It’s messy and imperfect. It’s filled with awkward stops, starts, and interruptions. Baumbach uses his signature overlapping dialogue to create this argumentative feel. The words his characters say aren’t always the important part, but rather the mood that they create.

Baumbach brings back familiar themes in this film that he has explored before. He discusses family, relationships, being an artist, love, and divorce, all things he has addressed before but this time does so in a new way. Baumbach has mature here and so have his ideas. He continues the things he’s always talked about in a new light.

Baumbach makes three kids of moves: movies about marriage and divorce, movies about family, and movies about artists. The Meyerowitz Stories is the maturity of his family stories and Marriage Story is the maturity of his divorce stories, while the two together split the artistic difference.

I must also draw attention to the masterful performances from Driver, Johansson, and the entire supporting cast. Everyone within this film is giving the performance of their careers. Adam Driver, who plays Charlie, and Scarlett Johansson, who plays Nicole, bring so much intensity to each character. They play characters that we could just as easily hate as we could love them. It’s a compliment to the writing, the direction, the editing, and to those performances. Driver and Johansson are sympathetic as much as they infuriating. And that conflict is pivotal to the narrative and to their characters.

Baumbach is careful to have either Charlie or Nicole be the main character and to ensure that they equally share the top spot. He doesn’t want the viewer to pick sides between them. They are just as equally flawed and equally redeemable.

This is even reflected in the editing. Baumbach’s editing creates empathy. It makes you feel everything going on in the scene. The cuts and the shots demonstrate exactly what’s happening emotionally. For example, there is this scene partway through where Nicole is going to serve the divorce papers to Charlie. The scene starts off fast as it constantly cuts between shots of Nicole and her family to emphasise the tension, but when Charlie enters the house, the shots become wider and the editing to emphasise how awkward the interaction is. It’s simple moments that show how much care went into making the movie. It’s not complex, but it adds a layer of nuance that most won’t notice, but adds a clear effect.

A huge shout out to the editor Jennifer Lame and her excellent work throughout the movie. She also edited Ari Aster’s Midsommar (2019) from earlier this year and is currently working on the next Christopher Nolan project Tenet (2020) as well as having previously edited several Baumbach and Aster projects like Hereditary (2018), Frances Ha, and The Meyerowitz Stories. She’s a talented woman and deserves recognition for her work.

Driver and Johansson bring so much passion to the very words they speak. Every monologue, every conversation, and even every word has the same amount of effort and energy put in as the last. That’s what is so truly amazing about this film. It never stops. Every scene could be the best one and that’s a good thing.

The supporting performances here are amazing as well. As many have already noted, Laura Dern, who is also starring in the upcoming Little Women (2019) film from Baumbach’s partner Greta Gerwig, shines as Nora, Nicole’s bitter divorce lawyer. She’s ruthless and brutal, but also comforting to Nicole and so we like her.

Ray Liotta is excellent in his small part has Charlie’s equally angry divorce lawyer. Azhy Robertson is fantastic has Charlie and Nicole’s son and provides some excellent emotional centering for the two. Julie Hagerty and Merritt Wever add some excellent livity as Nicole’s mother and sister respectively.

All of these performances, the writing, the editing, and the direction all add up to the film’s main purpose: Marriage Story brings a human element to divorce. Drawing from his own history, Baumbach wants us to understand these emotions in a new way. There’s this line from one of the lawyers “criminal lawyers see bad people at their best and divorce lawyers see good people at their worst.” Baumbach understands this better than most and wants us to understand the opposite. He wants us to see these good people in an honest light. Not just the worst, not just the best, but both.

That’s the secret of Marriage Story. It isn’t a love story gone wrong, or the end of a bad relationship. It’s everything all at once. And it’s powerful and personal and heartbreaking but in all of the right ways.

Score: 5/5

Marriage Story Quick Facts

Written and directed by Noah Baumbach

Starring Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson

Released November 6, 2019 (theatres), December 6, 2019 (Netflix)

136 minutes