It’s been forty years since we had a really good custody film. Oh, there have been good films in that span where custody was a topic, like Mrs. Doubtfire and Noah Baumbach’s own The Squid and the Whale. Yet, precious few films, and even fewer quality films –and none since Kramer vs. Kramer– have actually gone into depth about the Hellscape that is fighting for the right to ignore your children.
Quick to get all its smiles out of the way early on, Marriage Story begins with Charlie (Adam Driver) and Nicole (Scarlett Johansson) each with a laundry list professing what they love about the other person. The lists are thoughtful, the kind of bullet point love letters widows and widowers recite at eulogies. Novice film goers will swoon; veteran film goers cringe. When you begin a film with a wedding, you’re waiting for a divorce. Sure enough, the dueling montage of “awwww” cuts to a scene in the office of marriage counselor. Charlie and Nicole are splitting up.
Once upon a time, Nicole was a potential Phoebe Cates, a rising actress known primary for a topless scene in a teen comedy. While in Manhattan, Phoe B sees a play by the Broadway directorial version of a starlet. As a director, Charlie, too, was a rising star, and before long, Nicole became a fixture in his life and playhouse … never to be heard from again. That’s all expositional backstory. In the moment, he’s a respected off-Broadway director, and she just landed a part in a TV show pilot. Their lives are now on opposite coasts.
He wants NYC; she wants El Lay. That all is fine except for the fact that in the interim, they had a child, Henry (Azhy Robertson). And both parents want Henry on their coast. Remember that part where they talked about all the things they loved about one another? They both recognized the other as competitive. The montage at the outset illustrated the point twice (once for each parent) in comic fashion over a Monopoly board. But now, this ain’t Monopoly and they aren’t, unfortunately, playing with Monopoly money.
While the story remained focused on Nicole and Charlie, I was 100% with it. Couples break up. Nice couples. People you can imagine being. And perhaps for little other reason than, “you don’t see me.” Charlie is a good guy who took Nicole for granted; Nicole never made it clear that NYC was simply a rest stop on her way to something bigger. It’s all too common and sad, and Noah Baumbach has captured the essence of a nice couple dealing with being real people splitting up. And then the lawyers show up. Laura Dern, Alan Alda, and Ray Liotta take turns sullying the ground and uglifying the film. It’s a necessary step in demonstrating that, perhaps, there is no such thing as an amicable divorce, and yet Marriage Story becomes a genuine turn off when it becomes a lawyer battle.
Marriage Story is a film you watch if you’re thinking about a divorce. It will either solidify or, more likely, deter your emotions on the subject. Here are two otherwise reasonable people turning into monsters all for the sake of showing their child which parent is the least monstrous. That’s kinda awful, yet clearly true to life. If I might borrow an aphorism I learned from Marriage Story: “Criminal lawyers see bad people at their best, divorce lawyers see good people at their worst.” And therein lies the strength and weakness of this picture.
The storybooks end coupling at sappy
They cut out before arrangements get crappy
Yet when lawyers revolve
The proceedings devolve
So much cheaper just to stay at “unhappy”
Rated R, 137 Minutes
Director: Noah Baumbach
Writer: Noah Baumbach
Genre: Cringe
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Divorce lawyers
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Newlyweds
