How do you take a subject like divorce and the toxicity of a dissolving marriage and turn it into a poignant, occasionally funny, movie that isn’t so jaded and vitriolic that audiences cannot get behind the divorcing couple? Writer/Director Noah Baumbach did just that in 2019 when he helmed Marriage Story, a film about a show business couple with a young child who have decided to battle it out in the courts, both wanting to end the marriage amicably while dealing with attorneys who are opening their eyes to the reality of divorce court. Add to the mix two current likable stars in the leads and a young child actor who can realistically depict a kid in the middle of this confusing time and you have a film that went on to get nominated for six Academy Awards including for Best Picture.
Charlie Barber (Adam Driver) is a successful theater director in New York City with his own theater company that is helming a play that stars, as usual, his wife Nicole (Scarlett Johansson). The two have been married for ten years and are raising a son together while both work heavily. They are also having marriage difficulties and have been seeing a counselor with mixed results, eventually nixing further sessions. When Nicole is offered a starring role in a television pilot filming in Los Angeles, she decides to take their son, Henry (Azhy Robertson), with her and moves in with her mother in West Hollywood. Believing this is a temporary relocation, Charlie remains in New York and continues working on his play. While visiting Nicole in LA he is served divorce papers and informed he will need to secure the services of an attorney. From there things go downhill fast as both parents start out wanting things to be handled amicably while their respective attorneys push to go for the jugular. Petty observations and accusations enter the equation and all the while Henry is being pulled in both directions by parents who do not want to give up custody, relocate, or fly the boy back and forth from coast to coast.
I have to be upfront about one thing. I have never gone through a divorce or a separation. I’ve also never broken up with someone before, either as I didn’t start dating until my early twenties and I married the woman I started off with. We have been married for over twenty-six years now and it would take one of us going seriously off the rails to break us up, something neither of us sees happening. My parents are still happily marries as are my in-laws and all of my siblings. There are a couple of divorces on my wife’s side of the family amongst her brothers but I have little contact with any of them so I never was involved with it or saw any of it going down. I’m about the last person to be able to comment on the realism of divorce proceedings and the legal hoops as depicted in this film. To me it all felt realistic and believable with just a shade of exaggeration in the form of the lawyers and their attitudes towards the proceedings. Alan Alda has a memorable bit role as a laid back, barely qualified attorney who proves to be in over his head. He’s well meaning but is rightfully fired early into the process.
The divorce proceedings come down to a battle between Nicole’s lawyer Nora (Laura Dern) and Charlie’s second lawyer Jay Marotta (Ray Liotta). Nora is what I would consider a two-faced manipulator who talks nice and gentle while sharpening a knife to plunge into your back. When Nicole first consults with her she is understanding, talking about being amiable and making the divorce as simple as possible. Meanwhile she is setting things in motion to take Charlie to the cleaners, painting him to look like an unfit father, digging up tidbits of information to sway a judge towards a one-sided judgment, and even making sure that when Charlie tries to get his own lawyer he will have few options to choose from thanks to a law in California that prohibits any lawyer from representing him if Nicole has already had a consult with them first. This forces Charlie to accept an under-qualified lawyer initially lest he run out of time securing representation and the court summarily takes away all of his rights and possessions. When things finally do get to the point of dividing assets, she chooses to negotiate behind Nicole’s back for a better deal when her client wanted to split things 50/50.
Jay, Charlie’s second attorney, is a cut throat lawyer who refuses to accept that Charlie wants to concede anything, muddied up the water by taking even throwaway conversations between Charlie and Nicole and use it against her, building up animosity and pettiness between them. When the two agree to meet outside the legal offices just to talk, things quickly descend into finger pointing and yelling. Neither is willing to accept any of the blame for why their marriage failed. They both have valid points for why things are they way they are and there seems to be no way to make it work without one or the other sacrificing career and home to appease the other. Even Charlie’s brief infidelity is treated as at least partially her fault as Charlie proclaims it happened while he was relegated to sleeping on the couch, frozen out by her. This justification goes too far, though, when in the heat of an argument he tries to play it off as being much better than what he could have, should have, done being that he was still very young when they married and had plenty of opportunities. This is a ridiculous argument, made in the heat of the moment, and it’s doubtful that even he really believes it.
Director Noah Baumbach has stated that his style of filmmaking is inspired by Woody Allen among others. Some of that can be seen in his screenplay for Marriage Story, especially early on in scenes like when Charlie is just getting used to the idea of getting a divorce. Wallace Shawn, a member of his theater group, urges him to use this opportunity as an excuse to sleep with as many women as he can. Mary Ann (Brooke Bloom), the stage manager whom Charlie had the one night affair with, tries to use the separation as an excuse to reignite the affair. These are moments that come out of nowhere and are the type of blunt comedic scenes that could have come out of any number of Woody Allen’s 70’s and 80’s films.
Marriage Story, like The Prince of Tides, failed to score an Academy Award nomination for the director. While this was a relatively rare occurrence at the Oscars in years in the past, the expansion of the Best Picture category to include up to ten pictures nominated while only five directors would get their nominations, made this phenomenon more common. Out of the six nominations at the 2020 Academy Awards, only Laura Dern took home a statue. This was her third nomination and thus far only win. This win was very much deserved as she is scarily efficient at conveying just the type of character Nora is. When she sees that Charlie has hired a new, much more cutthroat lawyer, she first responds by playing up to Nicole that now things will have to get ugly, then is schmoozing up to Jay like they are friends catching up on old times. She clearly plays everyone around her to her own advantage and is never not acting in her own best interest no matter what she may say to the contrary.
There is some satire to this script but it is just subtle enough that it only occasionally calls itself out. The most egregious of this is Alan Alda’s character who is played so broadly that it feels out of place in this picture. This is in no way a dis on Alan Alda, himself, as he is doing a fine job with the character he was given. He’s just written as too much of a bumbling old man who’s in way over his head. He’s introduced as having been forced into changing his specialty to family law and then when we meet him he is in a shabby office, microwaving his lunch in front of his client while getting his glasses mixed up with that of his assistant. He gives advice to Charlie that he will later say was a bad decision that hurts their case, only acknowledging it was his own idea when Charlie calls him out for it. The scenes with him are humorous but they only serve to prolong the film and should have been excised.
Marriage Story could have been a real downer of a film, and to a degree it still is. But it also has a heart to it and it ends on a high note. No, they do not reconcile their marriage, this isn’t a romantic fantasy. But in the end Charlie does take a position in Los Angeles and is able to spend more time with Henry and Nicole does still care for him even though she cannot stay married to him. Divorce can be hard on kids and it helps when the parents can both still be a major part of the kid’s life and be civil with each other. Marriage Story ends on that note and thus has a bittersweetness to it all. The subject resonated with voters who made sure it got plenty of nominations at the Oscars that year even if it only won the one. It also was among the first films to usher in the big debate over whether a movie made for a streaming service should even be eligible for an Academy Award. This debate would come up again in 2022 when Coda, a movie made for Apple TV+ would go on to win it all.
Academy Award Nominations:
Best Picture: Noah Baumbach and David Heyman
Best Actor: Adam Driver
Best Actress: Scarlett Johansson
Best Supporting Actress: Laura Dern (won)
Best Original Screenplay: Noah Baumbach
Best Original Score: Randy Newman
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Release Date: November 6, 2019
Running Time: 137 Minutes
Rated R
Starring: Scarlett Johansson, Adam Driver, Laura Dern, Alan Alda, Ray Liotta, Julie Hagerty and Merritt Wever
Directed By: Noah Baumbach
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