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 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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Precisely balanced with a spicy script and many brilliant scenes. Baumbach at his best. He's not afraid to work with emotions and will even invite a bunch of old codgers to help him out. Laura Dern, Alan Alda and especially Ray Liotta portray exactly what is expected of them. And when it sometimes goes to the absurd, the writer and director in one always break it in another direction and the ride continues. I wouldn’t hesitate to call Marriage Story the relationship drama of the year. It does not moralise, nor does it take sides, it does an excellent job of showing the typically masculine ills of self-centeredness and not listening to the other side, as well as the feminine ills of not thinking rationally and sacrificing family for one's own sense of achievement, work fulfillment and satisfaction. Both sides are easy to understand, the fuck-up is right in the middle. And they portray that fact flawlessly.
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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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In Marriage Story, the waiter says to the father of the groom, "You have to enjoy this wedding, your son only gets married two or three times in your life." With such a number, it is not surprising that divorce also comes into play. Practice confirms this in the USA, where more than half of married couples get divorced. Marriage Story has hit a sore spot in contemporary Western society and has inevitably become one of the most talked-about films of the season. Noah Baumbach incorporated his personal experiences from his breakup with his former partner Jennifer Jason Leigh into the film. Baumbach takes no sides, nor does he focus on pathological behavior or people who, due to their weaknesses and personal traits, are unable to maintain a partnership. The desire for a dual-career marriage is to blame, which is difficult to reconcile with family life in certain professions. Both parties in the divorce are reasonable and level-headed individuals who theoretically should be able to agree on an acceptable form of separation and custody of their son in the child's best interest. However, the child inevitably becomes the catalyst for a court battle that takes on increasingly absurd and tragicomic dimensions. The director demonstrates an excellent sense of detail and adeptly balances between multiple genres. You would expect this to be a tear-jerking depressive drama, but Baumbach is not afraid to use purely entertaining supporting characters and adds sarcastic jabs to intense moments. Driver and Johansson are both likable and excellent actors whom you believe in their hesitations and pain as they become estranged and inflict emotional wounds on each other. While the film didn't take me to any heavenly heights, I consider it to be significantly above-average, well-written and well-directed. Overall impression: 80%.
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Scenes of married life, or what passes for it. I didn't know whether to prepare myself for absolute heartbreak from a little boy's perspective or for a rundown of the deliberate toxicity that can be generated by two people who once loved each other more than anything in the world. And although there is at least a taste of both present, I was decently beside myself in both cases. The main action surprisingly focuses on the legal process of divorce itself and what it forces both spouses to do, regardless of their original intentions. It is a spectacle full of bewildered frowns and disappointment at the inevitable, and thanks to Adam Driver's spot-on performance, it gets under your skin. Scarlett Johansson has the kinds of lines where you can hear the rustling of paper, which is not her fault but rather Noah Baumbach's, who clearly has Charlie figured out and yet is struggling painfully to understand the other side, which he never fully does. I expected more emotional clashes, which came only in the declining (but all the more powerful) finale, and I also expected more natural transitions within the carefully constructed legal process of divorce itself. In the end, it is neither as devastating nor as disarming as I expected or hoped, yet the story is incredibly strong, unpleasant at the right moments, and in the first and last place, honest.
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