Marriage Story (2019)

Much like Kramer vs Kramer, this ironically named movie follows the disintegration of a marriage and the legal processes therein of divorcing your spouse (a more contextually harmonious title would be “End of Marriage Story” or even “Divorce Story”). But Noah Baumbach names his film Marriage Story because the premise he chases after is something like “love conquers all, even divorce.” This is why he oscillates between the little expressions of love and couples that with the vehement anger and disgust expressed by our two ill-fated lovers, Charlie(Adam Driver) and Nicole(Scarlett Johansson).

These characters share a son, Henry, whose custody and place of living is the main question they argue about. Both Charlie and Nicole feel like they lose their agency and control to their attorneys in the divorce process. The divorce lawyers construct an illusory version of the truth in order to win the case rather than listening to the truth that organically emanates from the characters. This seems like a good metaphor for the film as a whole, where the illusion of “real” takes precedence over the authentic.

Which brings us to our emotional stakes. Marriage Story feels like it sprung from the mind of a theater director who wanted to put up a play where the only note was to “be real”. And so, as often these plays become, it transmogrifies into a clinical study where true emotion gets substituted for sensational artifice.

The image of “real’’ is carefully crafted, as if designed by a lab that dictates where to place the likable scenes and where to inject the exposure to the darker sides of human nature. Have Nicole give him a trumpet here to make us like her at this moment in time. Have the stage director touch Charlie’s thigh here to make sure we know something morally ambiguous is going on. It becomes so tirelessly technical that I didn’t care much for the relationship between Charlie and Nicole. Instead, I saw all the little buildups where the director indicates how the audience should feel rather than organically letting us decide on our own. Examples of these moments are whenever an inauthentic tableau appears for the sole purpose of reminding audiences that film is a visual medium. This is perfectly illustrated whenever Charlie and Nicole both hold onto their son and he is caught in the middle. A pictorial metaphor so cliche and unsubtle that I rolled my eyes every time this happened (read: at least 3 separate moments of the film.)