Marriage Story | Review

During the fervour around Shutter Island when it came out, my dad maintained that he couldn't see the merits of the film because he had seen a film almost identical to it, 30 years before. I felt this when I watched Marriage Story for the first time. 

Arguably Baumbach's most ambitious film, Marriage Story fictitiously recounts his divorce from Jennifer Jason-Leigh through the thinly veiled characters of Charlie, played by Adam Driver, and Nicole, played by Scarlett Johansson. I may have actually enjoyed this movie, had I not seen Kramer vs. Kramer a few years earlier and found it to be a much stronger contribution to the canon of "stripped-down drama about the dissolution of a marriage and ensuing custody battle".

While the acting performances are incredible (although I will never understand Laura Dern's Oscar for this performance when she was in Little Women that very same year - a significantly meatier role. Her performance in Marriage Story is underwhelming at best), Baumbach cannot seem to decide if he wants his film to be heightened or naturalistic, settling for an awkward combination of both. This makes it so that in certain scenes where the actors are pushing for naturalism, like in Johansson's big monologue to her therapist, their physicality is often at odds with what they're saying, making the acting seem a bit stilted at times. This is an issue that runs throughout the film, where Baumbach will go for grandiose visual storytelling and then pair it with a mundane setting or naturalistic dialogue. It is then jarring when he allows two, minutes long musical numbers to play out in their entirety - one right after the other. It also leads to bizarrely framed scenes, which seem to be intentional but often disrupt the flow of the action (for example, a scene where Charlie is framed closely from below,  but his son is framed at a wide angle even though the two are talking to each other - or when Charlie is sitting in his lawyers' office and neither he nor they are framed from each other's points of view). The cinematography is very beautiful, but it does not feel like there is much depth beneath it. 

I'm sorry to say it because I actually really like Baumbach, but on second viewing Marriage Story reminded me of season 2 Euphoria. I mean this in the sense that you are very aware that the film is making a reference, but often it only reminds you that the reference is much better and that you would rather be watching that instead. To put it shortly, it is derivative. I prefer Kramer vs. Kramer, not only because it came before, but that in its intimate portrayal of marriage and family, it revealed the many layers of gender and class dynamics that lie beneath it. Thus, the emotional resonance hits much harder. 

For me, Marriage Story is so thinly veiled I could not help but feel that Baumbach was being a bit self indulgent. While the film does start off with Nicole's perspective and the many ways she feels wronged and sidelined by Charlie, two thirds of the film are dedicated to Charlie's (Noah's) perspective. When his adultery is finally revealed, we are already so in deep with Charlie that it feels like this gets pushed aside. The rest of the film allows us to feel slighted by Nicole and their son, as they undermine Charlie's efforts to be a good dad and dismiss his affections. I would have liked to spend more time with Nicole and ruminate in her feelings of betrayal - what it has done to her sense of self. Kramer vs. Kramer also spends the majority of the film with the father (Dustin Hoffman), much more so than Marriage Story, but Meryl Streep's time on screen is spent so well, you cannot help but feel great sympathy for her. Nicole has much more screen time and yet she felt disconnected. 

Ultimately - I can acknowledge that Marriage Story is beautifully shot and well acted, with some moments of poignancy (the scene at the end where Charlie is reading Nicole's letter about the things she likes about him is a particular stand out) - it did and does not hit home for me. The film is just a bit too derivative, and in referencing these great films that came before it (Scenes From a Marriage is here too), it takes on the ambitious task of living up to them only to, in my mind, fall short.