[rating=10.00]
Three times now I’ve watched Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story. Three times now I’ve been absolutely wrecked. Baumbach, whose ascension through indie acclaim has been steady since Kicking and Screaming, his 1995 debut, has here created less a movie and more of an emotional experience, one that grips you by the heartstrings in its stirring opening and refuses to let go even after the final credits have rolled.
It is, simply, a masterpiece.
From its script to its staging, its performances to its feel, Marriage Story is a front-to-back perfect film filled with raw emotion and human complexity. Forget about Kramer vs Kramer. Baumbach has made the greatest divorce movie of all time, capturing the heartbreaking reality of love’s end better than any movie that comes to mind.
One can only wonder at how much of his real life he poured into this film. The auteur made headlines in 2013 with the finalization of his divorce from actress Jennifer Jason Leigh. Indeed, the two stars of Marriage Story, Adam Driver and Scarlett Johannsson, bare at least a partial resemblance Baumbach and Leigh, in spirit if nothing else.
Driver plays Charlie, an off-Broadway theater director who head an Avant Garde troupe led by his wife, Nicole (Johannsson). After ten years, their marriage is dissolving and Nicole, who’s long missed her Los Angeles home, accepts a role in a TV series that brings her and their son, Henry (Azhy Robertson) across the country. As the film progresses, we’re taken deeper and deeper into the emotional toil and heartache that goes with the dissolution of the marital union and secrets are laid bare as the two fight for custody of Henry.
Framed as a kind of he said/she said, Marriage Story flings us back and forth between the perspectives of both Charlie and Nicole, allowing Baumbach to give us a steady drip of exposition and narrative that unfolds beautifully on the screen. While not quite a Rashomon-style story, Baumbach’s framework allows for the existence of competing narratives, showing us that every story has another side, and that every party sees things a little differently.
Backed by a fabulous supporting cast that includes the likes of Wallace Shawn, Ray Liotta, Laura Dern, and Alan Alda, Driver and Johannsson each deliver the best performances of their careers and seem shoe-ins for nominations—at least—come Oscar season. We love them and hate them in turns as the journey towards final decree careens ever onward. Along the way, we see the emotional turmoil of divorce take its toll and each character in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. One particularly memorable scene, involving a fight in Charlie’s apartment, is easily one of the best scenes of the decade, and left me in tears each time I watched it.
Throughout it all, however, Baumbach manages to include the tiny details that make life continually magical. There are scenes where we laugh and cry in the same moment, where we love and are heartbroken all at once, where we are affirmed and destroyed at the same time. Baumbach, whose writing has always been top notch, exceeds himself by light years in Marriage Story, delivering a script that deserves to be studied and marveled over for years to come.
With Netflix handling the film’s distribution, the streaming service has reaffirmed its position as a disruptor for the traditional Hollywood system and, once again, made a play for the year’s biggest acclaims. This marks the second time Netflix has handled the release of a Baumbach film following 2017’s, The Meyerowitz Stories. While there’s still something negative be said about the service’s quantity-over-quality approach to releasing, whatever they’re doing is working if they were able to land a film such as this.
The ease of access will, hopefully, ensure that Marriage Story finds an immediate audience and earns the acclaim it so clearly deserves. Baumbach has achieved something truly extraordinary with his film and captured ugly realities in the most beautiful of ways. It is, quite frankly, the best, most emotional movie of the year.
Marriage Story is now available to stream on Netflix.
