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Three mantras go through "Marriage Story". The first one is "The Place! There is so much space in Los Angeles!" The New York theater director Charlie (Adam Driver) hears this as soon as the conversation comes that his still-wife, actress Nicole (Scarlett Johansson), will move to Los Angeles without him. "The space!"
From this place you will see something in the very last shot. Then, when Charlie has finally come to terms with what the film makes clear from the outset: Nicole will not return to New York, she will divorce Charlie.
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"Marriage Story": scenes of a divorce"It will pass" is the second mantra of "Marriage Story". Charlie's lawyer Bert (Alan Alda) says it after Charlie tells him about his situation. The pain, the disappointment, the anger that brings a divorce: It will pass. "You're the first to treat me like a human," Charlie says, as Bert tries to console him with these simple words.
But treating each other like a human being is not what a divorce process is about. Maybe Nicole knows that when she hires star lawyer Nora (Laura Dern). Nora immediately sets out to find out how Nicole could get sole custody of her son and how she might get all the money from Charlie's "Genius Grant", his highly endowed artist grant.
A statement about gang?
Charlie does not realize the brutality of the case until everything he does to save his family is interpreted against him. That he lets his son Henry move to Los Angeles with Nicole while she's doing the pilot episode of a new television series about taking a flat in LA for the time being is now taken as evidence that Charlie recognizes that LA is the one actual residence of the family is. Short Charlie has to swallow in the face of this perfidy, then he also moves with the allegations, denouncing and offsetting.
Noah Baumbach, author and director of "Marriage Story", has already made an autobiographical film about the consequences of a divorce. In "The Octopus and the Whale" of 2005, he looked at the molesting of a married couple from the perspective of a teenaged son (Jesse Eisenberg as Baumbach's alter ego). The film, Baumbach's breakthrough as a director, was full of grim humor and partiality, because as miserable as Jeff Daniels as a careless father and mediocre literary lecturer, a man has rarely maneuvered through his mid-life crisis.
"Marriage Story"
USA 2019
Written and directed by Noah Baumbach
Performers: Adam Driver, Scarlett Johansson, Laura Dern, Alan Alda, Ray Liotta, Merritt Wever
Production: Heyday, Netflix
Length: 136 minutes
Theatrical release: 21st November 2019, then from 6th December on Netflix
"Marriage Story" feeds on details from Baumbach's own divorce by Jennifer Jason Leigh. The actress, with whom he has a son, originated like movie character Nicole from LA, celebrated her breakthrough with a high-school comedy ("Fast Times at Richmond High") and finally filed the divorce of Baumbach from LA.
A statement on gang "Marriage Story" is still not become, because the film makes it clear why Nicole has alienated from Charlie. How he made promises that they would visit their family more often in LA and did not comply with them; How he gave her the direction and then let her play in the ensemble.
The Oscar moment
There are reasons for this divorce and not all have anything to do with feelings, that is the very modern "Marriage Story". Otherwise, the movie comes namely bourgeois dignified as the separation classic "scenes of a marriage" or "Kramer against Kramer" therefore. But the most modern thing about "Marriage Story" is how he demonstrates the monstrosity to which American divorce law has degenerated. To emerge halfway unharmed from a divorce seems not only impossible here - it even seems to be actively prevented. How Charlie and Nicole manage to get through this process is the film's incredibly painful, but also redeeming experience.
In the video: The trailer for "Marriage Story"
Netflix
"Being Alive", being alive, is the third mantra of "Marriage Story". Adam Driver sings it in the form of the eponymous Stephen Sondheim song from the musical "Company". It's Drivers big actor moment. The one who should secure him the Oscar nomination, and the one who finally reveals the sympathy of the film. Because before Nicole has sung a song from "Company", the cute-silly number "You Could Drive a Person Crazy", with her family together and in front of an audience.
Charlie, on the other hand, has the great dramatic solo performance that stylizes him as a lonely genius. The pain, the disappointment, the anger, they are not outweighed. But in the end, as Baumbach suggests with Drivers appearance, great art can still come out of it. Great art like "Marriage Story".