Marriage Story (2019)

Full disclosure, I can't say I've ever entirely enjoyed a picture by director and writer Noah Baumbach. I've admired them (The Squid and the Whale), loathed them (Margot at the Wedding), and been indifferent to them (Frances Ha, Greenberg). As with pictures by Michael Haneke, I tend to go into them a little wary, because I know if I like anyone too much (or even people generally) I'm bound to be hurt. Baumbach is just that kind of guy. Marriage Story, which is actually of course a divorce story, does not change any of that, even as I add it without hesitation to the "admire" stack. Good things here notably include an outstanding performance from Scarlett Johansson. Adam Driver, the other principal, is pretty good too. And then, perhaps because Baumbach is a little trendy and/or casting directors Douglas Aibel and Francine Maisler tried a little harder, the supporting cast is packed with many pleasant surprises too (Alan Alda, Laura Dern, Julie Hagerty, Ray Liotta), plus Randy Newman provides original music. To be clear, my complaint about Baumbach is his caustic misanthropy (understandable enough, but still somehow very hard to take). I have no problems with his skills as a screenwriter or director, which are considerable. There may be a number of wincing clichés about Marriage Story, with its super-privileged creative class who divide their time between New York City and Los Angeles. Driver's character, an experimental theater director, actually wins a MacArthur grant in the course of things. Setting that aside (even as I suspect it's there as a deliberate irritant, a thumb to the eye made of envy ... more of my problem with Baumbach), Marriage Story is a reasonably true story of a 20something marriage that ends in a 30something divorce in our modern America, meaning since Reagan but before the pandemic. Charlie and Nicole start out wanting to stay friends, but lawyers, unresolved resentments, and other pressures make it difficult, almost impossible, as the emotional warp and woof of events unfolds. It's all the issues we know: a woman who can't speak to her needs sacrificing everything to her man, who in turn is as oblivious as an infant. It's a reasonably happy and functioning marriage until it stops being so, for reasons no one can really articulate except to know it's irretrievably broken. This breakup is complicated by a kid, but don't worry, Baumbach is never going to go sentimental on us, and the kid is as bewildered and bewildering as everything else about the divorce. It's a truthful story and an artful one too. If its scenes often seem borrowed from Woody Allen movies—the urbane in their natural habitat, dim murmuring wood-paneled bars with someone playing Cole Porter on a piano—that's just the creative class front and center. Baumbach is a good deal more sensitive to the realities of relationships than Allen ever dreamed. Prepare to be annoyed, to be sad, and for various raw facts about human psychology.