Directed by:
Noah BaumbachScreenplay:
Noah BaumbachCinematography:
Robbie RyanComposer:
Randy NewmanCast:
Scarlett Johansson, Adam Driver, Laura Dern, Alan Alda, Ray Liotta, Julie Hagerty, Merritt Wever, Mark O'Brien, Ayden Mayeri, Wallace Shawn, Amir Talai (more)VOD (1)
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A love story about divorce. A marriage coming apart and a family coming together. Marriage Story is a hilarious and harrowing, sharply observed, and deeply compassionate film from the acclaimed writer-director Noah Baumbach. Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson deliver tour-de-force performances as Charlie, a charismatic New York theater director wedded to his work, and Nicole, an actor who is ready to change her own life. Their hopes for an amicable divorce fade as they are drawn into a system that pits them against each other and forces them to redefine their relationship and their family. Featuring bravura, finely drawn supporting turns from Alan Alda, Ray Liotta, and Laura Dern—who won an Academy Award for her performance here—as the trio of lawyers who preside over the legal battle, Marriage Story (nominated for six Academy Awards, including best picture) is a work of both intimacy and scope that ultimately invokes hope amid the ruins. (Criterion)
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Reviews (14)
A brilliantly written and just as well directed study on the inevitable consequences of the relationship of two rational and professionally ambitious people, fully credible in the dialogues and the performances, which couldn’t be any better. We are in the middle of it with the characters, we understand each of their decisions and rows, and Baumbach holds the sympathies on both sides (though as a guy, I related more to Driver), while at the same time managing to alternate the styles, the rhythm and the moods of the narration in an impressive manner, using long shots and markedly compositional editing to change the focus of attention and let the perfect actors stand out. It went by so quickly. I hope Scarlett gets the Oscar (Driver can’t beat Phoenix this year) and I'm already looking forward to another Baumbach – in The Meyerowitz Stories I was unable to relate to the characters despite their good portrayal, but in Marriage Story, I emotionally experienced every aspect. I’d love to see next time an Actor Story, about the life of Jack Nicholson. )) 90%
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I've despised and hated this film for a long time and with that I apologise and now award it a rightful five star rating. it's a powerful experience and one of the highlights within the genre. The film could also work as a stage play, it's built entirely on excellent performances. Johansson and Driver both give career-best performances, but it's also nice to see Laura Dern in a very strong role as a sharp and tough lawyer. The film has a longer running time, but it immediately draws you in with intelligent dialogue and I didn't blink for the entire film. Probably the most detailed film of one of the most difficult chapters in life that you just don't want to experience, especially if you live in the USA. Once the film switched to the battle of the lawyers and the trial, I was on a cinematic high in pure cinematic perfection. There are scenes that had such a big and powerful impact on me that I'm anxious to watch them again. I forgot to breathe during the scene where their argument culminates in powerful anger. A really perfect, suffocating and unpleasant film. 10/10.
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With Marriage Story, it’s like when you forget that you’re watching actors in a film and you feel as though you are intensely living the situation that the protagonists are going through. This is a fragile, dialogue-driven relationship film that employs excellent camerawork and editing in telling the story. Scarlett’s first confession to her lawyer is perhaps the film’s most brilliant scene. Her acting is comparable to Naomi Watts’s breathtaking performance in the rehearsal scene from Mulholland Drive. There is also, for example, the build-up of tension through editing, with gradual approaches to tense faces in the quarrel, and the climax in which the worst is said and then immediately regretted. It wouldn’t work so well on the stage without those close-ups of the actors’ faces. The dialogue is so authentic and the natures of the characters so precisely formed that playing them must have been creative ecstasy. And it’s not just Driver and Scarlett who turn in wonderful performances here. Laura Dern makes a full-force comeback in a small space and Ray Liotta masterfully makes up for his absence in The Irishman in an even smaller space. Marriage Story is like the best of Woody Allen, with a touch of La La Land’s heart. In my opinion, an Oscar for best screenplay is inevitable.
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All unhappy marriages are similar ... Baumbach has always had a weakness for overusing “Allen-esque" features; from New York to neurotic characters to a whirlwind of words filling 110 percent of the running time. But in the end, it has always been more about those too excessive emotions and solving deeply-rooted problems through paper-rustling nonstop dialogue than it was about the characters. Which is not the case this time, because the central married couple are “lifelike". Yes, Baumbach keeps Driver at the level of “continue playing Sackler in Girls" and Johansson as Woody himself styled her a decade ago, but that doesn't really matter, because they're both completely accurate and do a very good job of handling tense scenes full of big emotions in the form of a “devastating spiral" in the sense of "now we're not even pretending to resolve anything or arguing to release tension; we're just trying to hurt each other by saying stuff that we don't really want to say and can't take back", as well as quiet moments of mutual understanding and respect. The whole movie is about the two lead actors' performances. There are no weak moments, as their acting remains outstanding throughout the film. Their performances are confident. In addition, Baumbach has become an experienced screenwriter and director. His previous films would give the one-dimensional supporting “relief" characters, who bring a pinch of humor and farce (mother, sister, lawyers), a much greater role, which would have ruined everything in this film. The only moments when Marriage Story stumbles is when it sometimes comes across as “a documentary record of the end of the official and personal level of a long-term relationship". As a result, Marriage Story is a chronicle of the purgatory called divorce. And that in itself is so telling that there is no need to say anything else.
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A very powerful cinematic experience that I can't give a full score to just because of the state of mind, even despair, it sent me into. After all the pressure about getting married and having kids that I got during my Christmas visits – as a thirty-something, long-engaged girl – now the threat of divorce is now creeping into my thoughts. Thanks, I really needed that. Maybe I'm being a little too open about my private life, but that's largely due to this movie. It wasn’t just the dialogue and the differing attitudes of the man and woman that stirred a lot of emotions in me. It's brilliantly acted, written, and filmed, but also exhausting in its own way... 4.5 stars.
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