THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER 75 SEPTEMBER 4, 2019
like scorching lava. As the prob-
lems of their marriage are laid
bare (his reflexive selfishness and
infidelity, her tendency to cast
herself as a victim), the scene
harrowingly captures how easily
love can curdle into hate — the
terrifying closeness of the two.
This all makes Marriage
Story sound grimmer than it
is. Baumbach has always been
a master of high-toned cringe
comedy, and there are laughs that
leaven the mood here. When a
poker-faced social worker (Mary
Hollis Inboden) visits Charlie
and Henry, the result is a stealth
comic set piece that, in its
unnerving way, is even more of
a high-wire act than the swerve
into country-house farce in
Baumbach’s Mistress America.
Collaborating with DP Robbie
Ryan, the director employs a
supple visual style, interspers-
ing close-ups that capture subtle
shifts in his actors’ faces with
wider angles that draw attention
to the physical distance between
Charlie and Nicole, as well as
their movements and body
language around each other. The
framing, staging and control
over the flow of the action are
often dazzling, though free of
gratuitous flash or fuss. Objects
and gestures — a gate pulled
shut, a shoelace being tied — are
imbued, but never weighed down,
with meaning.
Johansson, who has never bur-
rowed into a role so completely,
makes you feel the clashing
impulses and instincts in every
step of Nicole’s transition into
life without Charlie. Driver has
an even trickier task, delivering a
brilliantly inhabited and shaded
portrait of a man slowly starting
to reckon with the eclipsing effect
he’s had on the most important
person in his life. It’s a testament
to their brilliant work that by the
time the film reaches its delicate
knockout of a conclusion, despite
all Charlie and Nicole have said
and done, the maddening mess
they’ve made of things, we’ve
come to love them both.Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver do career-best work in
Noah Baumbach’s epic heartbreaker of a divorce drama By Jon Frosch
Nicole tells Nora her side of the
story, recounting how her identity
gradually became secondary to,
and then swallowed by, Charlie’s.
The substance of the monologue
is familiar: A woman finds herself
shrinking in the shadow of her
husband’s ego and needs. But
Baumbach shoots it in a few long
takes, and the whirlpool of feel-
ings Johansson conjures — the
nostalgia, churning vulnerability,
currents of shame and self-loath-
ing — is astonishing.
After meeting with two attor-
neys (Alan Alda and Ray Liotta),
Charlie establishes part-time
residency near Nicole in order
to negotiate shared custody of
Henry. The exes still care about
each other, as illustrated by two
moments of gentle heartbreak
— one in which Nicole trims
Charlie’s hair, another in which
she orders lunch for him at a
settlement conference. Among the
movie’s most piercing insights is
that divorce, even when necessary,
isn’t always intuitive; sometimes
it’s an act of self-abnegation, con-
trary to what the heart wants and
requiring an almost cruel degree
of discipline.
With the lawyers nudging them
toward more aggressive stances,
Charlie and Nicole face off in an
argument of soul-shaking vitriol,
their grievances surging forthleast expect it, almost unbearably
tender, thanks in large part to the
sensational leads, who deliver the
deepest, most alive and attuned
performances of their careers.
Marriage Story puts you through
the wringer, but leaves you
exhilarated at having witnessed
a filmmaker and his actors
surpass themselves.
The juxtaposition of the film’s
moony opening montage with
the tense mediation scene that
follows generates suspense: What
went wrong between Charlie and
Nicole? But Marriage Story isn’t
a wistful postmortem of a failed
romance à la Annie Hall; rather,
it’s a chronicle of conflictedness,
and of how a relationship changes
— flails, explodes, evolves — over
the course of divorce proceedings.
When we meet them, Charlie is
a Brooklyn theater director and
Nicole, having turned down offers
in Hollywood, his company’s lead-
ing lady. After they split up, Nicole
takes their 8-year-old son, Henry
(Azhy Robertson), and moves back
to her native Los Angeles to shoot
a TV pilot. She spends time with
her mother (Julie Hagerty) and
sister (Merritt Wever). A new life
starts to take form.
Nicole consults high-powered
divorce lawyer Nora Fanshaw
(played to savage perfection by
Laura Dern). Staying friends with
her ex is the priority, Nicole notes.
“We’ll do it as gently as possible,”
Nora reassures her. Uh-huh.Marriage Story begins with a
fake-out. Via voiceover, spouses
Charlie (Adam Driver) and Nicole
(Scarlett Johansson) enumer-
ate things they adore about each
other: She’s an unparalleled
listener, an expert gift giver, an
“infectious” dancer; he’s a natural
with their young son, a great
dresser, cries at movies. Glimpses
of their shabby-chic domestic
contentment are shown as a bit-
tersweet Randy Newman score
swells. It’s all warmly romantic.
Alas, the lists aren’t Valentine’s
Day cards or an intimacy exercise.
They’re something a mediator
has asked the pair to put together
to kick off their separation in
good faith. On the surface, this is
not a tale of love, but of mount-
ing mutual hostility — though
as Noah Baumbach’s wounding,
masterly new film argues, the line
between those sentiments can be
agonizingly blurry.
Viewers who dug the relative
mellowness of Baumbach’s 2017
effort The Meyerowitz Stories (New
and Selected) should brace them-
selves: Like Ingmar Bergman’s
Scenes From a Marriage — an
influence — this is a tough work,
steeped in pain that feels winc-
ingly immediate (it’s based on
Baumbach’s divorce from Jennifer
Jason Leigh) and unsparing in its
willingness to observe, at star-
tling emotional proximity, good
people at their worst.
It’s also funny and, when you
Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver play a
married actress and director embroiled in
a bitter bicoastal breakup.OPENS Friday, Nov. 6 (Netflix)
CAST Scarlett Johansson,
Adam Driver, Laura Dern, Ray Liotta,
Alan Alda, Julie Hagerty
DIRECTOR Noah Baumbach
Rated R, 136 minutesMarriage Story
Venice
Film
Festival