Little White Lies - 11.2019 - 12.2019

REVIEW 073

aving just been served his divorce papers,

Charlie (Adam Driver) wanders across

the first floor landing of his wife’s family

home, looking at the framed pictures on the wall.

One of them is a cut-out from a magazine, a feature

about the couple’s successful theatre company

titled ‘Scenes From a Marriage.’ It’s a nod from

writer-director Noah Baumbach towards the ne

plus ultra of marital-breakdown dramas, Ingmar

Bergman’s 1973 miniseries of the same name; a let’s-

just-get-this-out-of-the-way acknowledgement

from a filmmaker who’s suffered comparisons

to the Swedish maestro and his disciple, Woody

Allen, throughout his career, a symptom of the

superficially comparable well-to-do milieus that his

characters tend to inhabit.

If the title of Baumbach’s 11th dramatic

feature shares a Bergman-esque directness, it’s an

altogether kinder proposition than its venomous

antecedent. It’s a funnier one too, dancing between

genre licks with all the grace of a Golden Age hoofer.

The serving of divorce papers plays like pure

screwball, as Scarlett Johansson’s Nicole tries to

make things easier on her husband with the help

of her mum and sister, orchestrated by Baumbach

through a series of entrances, exits and lots of

overlapping dialogue. The 136 minute running time

is no rarity these days, but its construction, through

a series of long, living and breathing ‘scenes’ that

each come with an actual beginning and end, feels

genuinely refreshing.

It’s a film of devastating cumulative power,

even-handed and empathetic in its approach to two

characters whose relationship has broken down, but

who still want the best for their child and each other.

Steered by a trio of lawyers in the form of Laura

Dern, Ray Liotta and Alan Alda, the ‘business’ of

divorce proceeding foments a breakdown in civility,

leading to a pair of knockout scenes: an argument

of winding cruelty, and a home visit from a social

worker (Martha Kelly, magnificent) that swiftly

descends into wince-inducing farce.

Baumbach’s formal conceits prove at once

staggering and delicately measured, from an

extended monologue delivered by Johansson that

the filmmaker steadily pushes in on, to a diptych

of musical numbers from Stephen Sondheim’s

Company, the latter of which, as performed by

Adam Driver, is destined to set you scrambling for

a second pack of tissues. It almost seems unfair to

single out one performance among a cast bringing

its A-game across the board – and any cast including

Alan Alda faces some serious competition – but

Driver is truly revelatory. So often cerebral or

sardonic, if never less than intelligent in previous

roles, with Marriage Story he seems to have access

to an emotional range heretofore unseen, landing

the heaviest of the knockout punches.

The film’s successive and collective triumphs,

though, really belong at Baumbach’s door. Gone is

archness and intellectualism that threatened his

previous work as writer-director, replaced with a

tenderness and emotional truthfulness so generous

and empathetic that he’s finally earned contention

as one of the greatest American filmmakers of his

generation. MATT THRIFT

Directed by
NOAH BAUMBACH
Starring
ADAM DRIVER
SCARLETT JOHANSSON
ALAN ALDA
Released
15 NOVEMBER

ANTICIPATION.

Noah Baumbach has always been
solid-to-great, so where will his
latest land?

ENJOYMENT.

Devastatingly powered
by one knockout
performance after another.

IN RETROSPECT.

Baumbach is now definitely one
of the greats.

Marriage Story

H