Director Noah Baumbach
MARRIAGE
STORY
A
USA (136 mi) 2019 d: Noah Baumbach
Coming full circle in his career, while The
Squid and the Whale (2005) is about a nasty divorce (without lawyers) between
two literary parents largely seen through the children’s perspective, as the
parental anger is internalized through the kids, returning to familiar
territory more than a decade later, featuring the tug and pull on a single
child during a contentious divorce, largely seen through the eyes of a show
business couple splitting up on opposite coasts, where each film is a
devastating emotional train wreck, though this may be Baumbach’s most mature
work to date, largely losing the satiric comic humor, which may work as a
defense mechanism, finally allowing the excruciating drama to breathe and
unfold naturally. In each film, the director speaks from experience,
having endured a particularly contentious divorce between his literary parents
as a child, and then experiencing it again firsthand during his 2013 divorce
with actress Jennifer Jason Leigh. Both films are emotionally impactful
and career defining, with the earlier film favoring brief comic vignettes that
stand out for their incisively expressed anguish and pain, while this later
film is an hour longer, administering surges of corrosively exploding
disagreements that send shock waves into the audience, as otherwise likeable
people become combatants in a theatrically staged court process that feels absurdly
designed to humiliate all parties concerned, leaving horrific carnage in its
wake, which is supposedly in the best interests of the children. Somehow,
someway, people are supposed to recover from these traumatizing events and
become reasonable people who are still capable of instilling love for their
mutual children while working out the shared responsibilities of raising them
from different homes. Paying tribute to Ingmar Bergman’s epic SCENES FROM
A MARRIAGE (1973), though never taking sides, what’s uniquely different about
this film is the freedom to explore both distinctly different personalities as
they themselves are realizing the full extent of what is taking place
internally, as no one is more surprised by the changing dynamics than they are,
having been living comfortably under one roof, both successful in their own
careers, happily combining their forces onstage, becoming part of the existing
theater scene in New York. Baumbach has always been known as an
exquisitely gifted writer, as his performance-generated films accentuate a kind
of free-flowing dialogue that is both smart and humorous at the same time,
finding it easy to personally internalize his experiences cinematically, much
like Woody Allen did early in his career when his films were immersed in the
cultural spotlight of New York City, developing a kind of East coast chic, yet
SQUID was the benchmark of his talents until this film, which is unlike
anything else he’s ever done, more open, more accessible, yet emotionally
abrasive, where it’s hard not to feel the open vein of heartbreak when you
realize love often isn’t
enough.
Ostensibly the story of two charismatically appealing
people, both providing the performance of their careers, Charlie (Adam Driver),
an up and coming avant-garde theater director in New York who throws everything
he makes back into his theater, while his wife, Nicole (Scarlett Johansson), is
the leading lady who stars in all his productions, where their lives revolve
around each new play, consumed by the inherent possibilities of new
expressions. Together they have an adored 8-year old son Henry (Azhy
Robertson), where the beauty of their marriage is that they’re all
intrinsically attuned to one another, where one is an extension of the other,
even down to the tiniest details, both openly generous, where there’s an
unspoken language for married couples, who somehow know what the other is
thinking or what they need and instantly provides it without so much of a
thought, as it all happens so easily, becoming second nature to them. The
film opens with two meticulously detailed and amazingly coherent letters
revealing everything they like about the other person, which defines them in
adoringly lovable ways, exploring everything that’s uniquely different about
them, while exposing their innate humanity, as this is the core foundation of
their love. It’s such a beautiful way to start a film, immediately
pulling the audience into their inner wavelengths, finding something appealing
about them both. Without question they work well together, yet suddenly
they’re in the offices of a marriage counselor, expected to read their prepared
letters, but a fuming Nicole refuses, storming out in protest, finding it a
complete waste of time. Both decide they don’t want lawyers, thinking
they can figure it out themselves. As if in response, she decides to take
a role in a television pilot that may or may not get picked up, moving to West
Hollywood with Henry, living with her unhinged showbiz mother (Julie Hagerty)
and socially awkward sister (Merritt Wever), exploring what her career might be
like without Charlie. While it’s viewed as a temporary, knee-jerk
response, it literally opens the door to a brand new world for Nicole,
something she always turned down before in favor of working with her husband,
feeling she may have sacrificed her own career for his, but is now open to new
opportunities. Both she and Henry blossom in their new environment, while
Charlie remains engrossed in his theater company, as his play is moving to
Broadway, completely unaware of her emotional transformation, which is
unleashed in a monologue of expurgated fury, where the intensity of her
built-up anger surprises even her, unleashed in the offices of a hyper-focused
divorce attorney, Nora (Laura Dern), friendly to a fault, but specializing in
going for the jugular, offering her own blistering speech on the religiously
entrenched societal devaluation of motherhood. When Charlie comes to
visit announcing that he’s won a “genius” MacArthur Fellowship grant, a
prestigious award that comes with a sizable monetary stipend that can help fund
his theater project, he’s completely blindsided by being served divorce papers
(which was family rehearsed), while also urged to find a hotel, as he can’t stay
with Nicole. Welcome to life in
LA.
What follows is a descent into the monstrous hell of divorce
attorneys, like a Kafkaesque house of pain that makes no sense, as Charlie
typically avoids all lawyerly repercussions while attempting to stage his play,
forced at the last minute to respond in court or lose custody rights, so he
searches desperately for a lawyer, torn between tough guy Ray Liotta who
basically extorts all future earnings (including his grant), charging the
astronomical amount of $950/hour, and nice guy Alan Alda, a grandfatherly type
who empathizes with his pain, offers hugs, charges considerably less, but is
easily manipulated in the hearings, allowing Nora to ride roughshod over
them. Going through a series of humiliations and disappointments, having
to fly back and forth between coasts, Charlie is up against it, as his world is
simply collapsing all around him, living an agonizing life of deep turmoil,
where every gesture is met with a resounding slam of the door. Even Henry
turns against him, as he’s enrolled in school, has a bunch of new friends,
where he’s enjoying himself more in the sunshine, surrounded by new
opportunities, while Dad is in desperate straits, trying to hold on, but losing
every step of the way, advised to establish residence in Los Angeles if he
wants a chance of joint custody, but his life there is a dreary emptiness, a
sham of an existence, kept away from his work which is collapsing without him,
yet it’s his only chance to hold onto his son. Meanwhile, Nicole’s life
is flourishing, coming out from under her husband’s shadow, where her talent is
recognized, realizing her own hopes and dreams, as her pilot is picked up, and
she’s even been offered the chance to direct, where she’s part of the Hollywood
crowd now, hanging out at posh parties with all the beautiful people.
However the day of reckoning arises, their ultimate day in court, with Charlie
backed into a corner, forced to go with Mr. Big Bucks, Ray Liotta as his
lawyer, where the back and forth resembles a street fight, each undermining the
other with savage attacks of character, where it’s pure histrionics, like a
theater performance of who can inflict the most damage, both ultimately leveled
by heinously exaggerated accusations. It’s a pathetic display that leaves
both feeling humbled and utterly ashamed afterwards, attempting some
reconciliation in Charlie’s empty apartment, but it deteriorates into a
blitzkrieg of frayed emotions, where all the innermost fears and perpetual
anxieties come streaming out in a slugfest for the ages, leaving both
devastated and emotionally exhausted afterwards, emptying themselves of all
nagging resentments, perhaps free to finally let go. Subjected to a near
surreal visit by a court appointed observer that ends in an unmitigated
disaster, Baumbach magnificently pivots into two Stephen Sondheim songs from Company wonderfully getting the elevated
exposure they deserve, capturing the richness and emotion of the lyrics while
transforming them into new contexts, ambitiously interweaving them into the
refreshingly new state of mind of each character, cleverly altering the meaning
in marvelously inventive sequences. Nicole showcases her natural charisma
singing You Could Drive a Person Crazy
with her mother and sister in an upbeat Andrews Sisters-style rendition at a
large party gathering with friends, now gloriously happy, in harmony with her
surroundings and the picture of success, while Charlie, back in New York in a
piano bar surrounded by his theater troupe breaks out into Being Alive, almost in jest at first, but then diving in full
throttle, with the words just gushing out, literally pouring out his heart and
soul, becoming a spontaneous stream-of-conscience revelation, shot in one take,
revealing an exposed, vulnerable side, finally opening up again, reconnecting
to his world, yet it’s done with such an instinctual theatrical flair, feeling
so effortless and natural. Watching them process what they value the
most, authentic performances, reveals a resuscitation of what’s so essential to
them both as artists, bookending that marvelously inventive reading of the
letters at the opening, coming full turn, both finally allowed to breathe
again.
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