A10| Friday, November 8, 2019 THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
FILM REVIEW| JOE MORGENSTERN
The Pain of Parting
Noah Baumbach’s ‘Marriage Story,’ about a couple in the throes of divorce, feels both personal and universal
A LOST-LOOKINGMiri Matteson, wearing
government-issue khaki and a DIY haircut,
finds her old bedroom exactly as she left it,
down to the posters on the walls: David
Bowie. Michael Jackson. George Michael.
Prince. And Jamie Oliver.
“Last man standing,” says her mum.
“Thank God he’s still with us,” whispers
Miri (Daisy Haggard).
This is funny. Isn’t it? Well, yes, though
“Back to Life”—the six-episode British series
premiering on Showtime over the next three
Sundays (two half-hour episodes a week)—is
what one might call an ostensible comedy,
and one that works only because of a deft
mix of humor and pathos. The continued exis-
tence of one’s favorite celebrity chef shouldn’t
inspire such solemn gratitude, unless perhaps
you’re a woman who’s just spent 18 years in
prison. Finding a working Discman among
your personal belongings shouldn’t choke you
up. Unless you’re about to re-enter society
like a particularly unwelcome alien.
Created/written by Ms. Haggard and
Laura Solon, and produced by Harry and
Jack Williams of “Fleabag,” the series is
funny because it’s surprising and tantalizing
because you don’t initially know what’s
what. The viewer is led along for some con-
siderable time before learning what Miri
did, and why her sentence was so severe, in
the meantime being treated to the niceties
of the citizens of Hythe (a real English
town, on the Kentish coast). “You can clean
offices in hell, you sick bitch,” Miri is told
on the phone, as a job interview is, appar-
ently, canceled. Her father, Oscar (Richard
Durden), dutifully cleans the hateful graffiti
off the front of their house; her mother, Car-
oline (Geraldine James), hides the kitchenknives. “Don’t Google yourself,” warns her
probation officer (a joyfully abrasive Jo
Martin). Her neighbor, Billy (Adeel Akhtar),
meeting Miri for the first time over the
backyard fence, asks “Are you Airbnb-ing?”
and she has no idea what he’s talking about.
“Back to Life” actually employs a pretty
light touch with the fish-out-of-water gags,
and Miri’s gaffes. Interviewing at the town’s
new fish-and-chips joint, she lies to its
open-minded owner, Nathan (Liam Wil-
liams), that she has other interviews as
well, “at Blockbuster and Woolworth’s.” “I
could murder a coffee,” Nathan tells Miri,
and then apologizes profusely. The show
tends not to preach, despite an unmistak-
able message about the human capacity for
cruelty and unearned indignation. Mean-
while, there’s a mystery afoot, about what
happened where and when. And who died.
There’s also a lot going on in Hythe. Sex-
ual liaisons of the most unlikely kind. A for-
mer friend, Mandy (Christine Bottomley),
trying to reconnect. And a mysterious fellow
with a tape recorder (Frank Feys), who may
be press, or a detective, or maybe just a nut.
“Back to Life” is a comedy essentially be-
cause it’s not a tragedy. The same might be
said of “Orange Is the New Black,” about
women in prison, or “Unbreakable Kimmy
Schmidt,” about a former sex slave. None of
these shows would work with men as the
stars, it seems safe to say. “Back to Life,” at
least on paper, shouldn’t work at all. But it
does. And though matters seem to wrap up
tidily with episode 6, a viewer will be hop-
ing there’s more to come.Back to Life
Begins Sunday, 10 p.m., ShowtimeSHOWTIME
Daisy Haggard stars as Miri Matteson in ‘Back to Life,’ which deftly mixes humor and pathos.TELEVISION REVIEW| JOHN ANDERSON
A Newly Released Prisoner
You’ll Want to Do Time With
T
he marvelous paradox
of Noah Baumbach’s
“Marriage Story” is
how full of life it is for
a tale of two people—
Scarlett Johansson’s Nicole and
Adam Driver’s Charlie—going
through a kind of death as their
marriage comes apart and they
contend for custody of their young
son, Henry (Azhy Robertson, per-
fect in the role). One of Charlie’s
lawyers, a charming geezer named
Bert (Alan Alda), puts it more viv-
idly: “Getting divorced with a kid
is one of the hardest things to do.
It’s like a death without a body.”
Bert also tells Charlie, for no dis-
cernible reason, not to expect too
much from an old cat shambling
around his shabby office. I’d say
expect a lot from the movie and
you won’t be disappointed. It’s a
life-affirming, profoundly affecting
classic.
Mr. Baumbach has confronted
the subject before, from a different
perspective. His 2005 “The Squid
and the Whale” grew out of his
memories of his parents’ lacerat-
ing break-up. “Marriage Story”
also has an autobiographical com-
ponent—in 2010 he and his wife,
Jennifer Jason Leigh, split less
than one year after the birth of
their son. But the new film feels
equally personal and universal in
its searing intensity and its bril-
liant willingness to entertain.
The title is apt. Every story
about divorce is a marriage story,
told from contending perspectives
that shift and waver, merge and
diverge, overlap and collide. This
one, set on both coasts—he’s a
New York stage director, she’s an
actress who grew up in the movie
industry in Los Angeles—begins in
mutual hurt and the unexamined
notion that two people who have
loved one another and share a be-
loved child should be able to de-
couple amicably, fifty-fifty, no
harm, no foul.
That they cannot is no surprise,
and due in part, though only in
part, to a legal system that, in the
words of another lawyer on the
case, rewards bad behavior. What’s
remarkable is how the filmmaker
plays with our perceptions by tilt-
ing our sympathies—toward Char-
lie for a while, or toward Nicole—
then giving us glimpses of the
imponderably complex truth. Or
unleashing raw, even savage feel-
ings in harrowing arguments or
sensational monologues. And it’s
almost too beautiful to bear when,
near the end, a scene comes out of
nowhere, shattering every rule of
conventional construction, to say
everything that remains to be said
about why two wonderful people
like Nicole and Charlie must en-
dure such terrible torment, and
saying it, with fiery hope, througha Stephen Sondheim song.
Music matters a lot here. The or-
chestral score, by Randy Newman,
is spare but heart-piercingly poi-
gnant, an evocation of a sweeter,
gentler America that never was
and, by extension, an untroubled
marriage that never could be, de-
spite its romantic beginnings.
What’s left of the relationship isn’t
pretty, but the spectacle is thrilling
because Nicole and Charlie are so
engaging, even when they’re carry-
ing on like rageful children, and be-
cause they’re played by superb ac-
tors at the top of their game, under
Mr. Baumbach’s flawless direction.
Other films have explored divorce
to devastating effect—“Kramer vs.
Kramer” and “Shoot the Moon” are
classics in their own right. The dis-
tinction of “Marriage Story” is the
special intimacy it achieves, not
through the dramatic equivalent of
chamber music but through hugely
spirited performances, a buoyant
mixture of pleasure and pain, and a
pace that ranges from suspenseful
percolations to seismic payoffs.
(Robbie Ryan did the self-effacing
yet expressive cinematography.)
Ms. Johansson weaves a spell
every which way: Nicole in dis-
tress, drained of psychic energy;
Nicole in narrative mode, dressedin gray and sitting in the corner of
two gray walls as she streams her
consciousness hypnotically; Nicole
on her home turf, rejoicing in her
family and nailing her role in a TV
pilot that has just gone to series.
Mr. Driver makes Charlie wounded
and neurotic, but not Woody Al-
len-style. Entirely devoid of man-
nerisms, a virtuoso of droll solem-
nity, this mysteriously inward star
with a musically resonant voice
creates a New Yorker so woe-
fully—and comically—out of his el-Charlie’s presence and hot for his
body. Ray Liotta is Jay, a take-no-
prisoners attorney who takes
Charlie on as a client. Laura Dern
is Nora, Nicole’s lawyer, a high-
billing, high-heeled predator and
the svelte embodiment of gleeful
revenge. Ms. Dern is terrific in the
role; instead of stealing scenes,
she pins them down, ties them up
and holds them in bondage. Mar-
tha Kelly is hilariously listless as
Nancy, a Los Angeles social
worker; sent to evaluate Charlie’s
competence as a father, Nancy is
somewhere on a still-to-be-deter-
mined spectrum.
For all its wit and rueful wis-
dom, “Marriage Story” doesn’t set-
tle on what drove Charlie and Ni-
cole apart. The closest she comes
to a proximate cause is realizing
that married life came to mean liv-
ing in his shadow, feeling unseen—
being the Invisible Woman without
dressing for the part. “I got
smaller,” Nicole says. The closest
he comes isn’t close at all: Charlie
keeps insisting that they’re still a
New York family long after they’ve
ceased to be either. But diagnosis
isn’t the point. Mr. Baumbach’s
concern is where love can go after
it has turned to hate. The deeper
his story goes the bigger it gets.ement that he seems amputated in
L.A., rather than transplanted, and
never more so than during a pain-
fully funny Halloween sequence
when he takes Henry trick-or-
treating on the Sunset Strip.
(Charlie goes as the Invisible Man,
a logical choice given how he’s
feeling about himself.)
A fine supporting cast gets the
distinctive material it deserves.
Julie Hagerty is Sandra, Nicole’s
mother; well on her way to cheer-
ful dottiness, she’s warmed byLIFE&ARTS
Above, Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver, far right; below, Laura Dern and Ms. JohanssonNETFLIX (2)