Netflix And Chill: Marriage Story (2019)

Written and directed by Noah Baumbach, Marriage Story is the tale of Nicole (Scarlett Johansson) and Charlie (Adam Driver), a married couple who are also parents to one young son, Henry (Azhy Robertson). Marriage Story sounds much nicer than Divorce Story, but the latter title would be a better  description. This is, in many ways, a Kramer Vs. Kramer for the 21st century, showing how the most well-intentioned journey from marriage to amicable divorce can lead to ugliness, point-scoring, and a feeling akin to being scraped away, layer by layer, like the walls in an old house that are having years of different wallpapers removed. It cuts down to the bone at times, mainly because who can hurt you best more effectively than someone who once loved you the most? That hurt doesn't have to be intentional, it can come from watching your partner manage to get up and go about a normal day with you no longer in it, it isn't even always intended when it comes out in the form of some hateful speech vomited out by someone lashing out while feeling backed further into a corner.

Driver and Johansson are both superb in their roles here, and I would have been happy to see both of them showered with awards for their performances. Both have moments that will reverberate with anyone who has been in, or close to, the painful circumstances on display. And I would say that Driver has one moment of raw, childish, rage, both thoughtless and yet constructed to cause maximum damage, that holds up as a small movie moment that will be seared into your memory. Alan Alda and Ray Liotta are two very different types of lawyers who end up helping Driver, and both do excellent work, and Laura Dern is the formidable lawyer hired by Johansson, a role she clearly sets about with relish from her very first appearance in the movie. Small roles for Julie Hagerty and Wallace Shawn help to lighten the material, with Hagerty a real delight as the mother-in-law who cannot just put an end to a friendship with her son-in-law, despite what her daughter would prefer.

This isn't a review in which I feel the need to go on about the score, camerawork, production design, etc. Baumbach puts everything in the right place, allowing the main characters to feel like real people in our world, but the material feels like it could work just as easily in play form, with the focus always on the dialogue and the acting above any potential cinematic flourishes.

This is not an easy watch. What may seem slick and out of touch with most people (Driver is a successful director of stage plays, Johansson is an actress, these are not your everyday working class folk trying to navigate these waters) actually contains a lot of honest moments that many will be able to identify with, whether that's good or bad. Considering the timing of my viewing, I don't think I'll be rushing to watch it again. But, trust me, that is just a testament to how much it gets right.

9/10