In a beautiful opening sequence, each of the two main characters delivers a voice-over reading of letters they've written about their spouse. The things they're passionate about, how they parent their son, their work ethic, sense of humor, personal strength, endearing quirks: the things they love about each other. The recitation is dramatized in montage fashion, revealing writer-director Noah Baumbach's absolute control over these characters and his depth of understanding of who they are. Rarely are romantic dramas populated by such specific, realistic characters; much less ones that take on hot-topic issues like divorce and child custody.
Make no mistake, Marriage Story is about marriage; it's just not about the lead into one. Rather, it concerns the dissolution of marriage, something we commonly consider to be a failure or a culmination of failures. Baumbach would have us believe that ending a marriage is in fact not a failure in itself, and he's right. His carefully articulated screenplay allows for no villains, no great explosive "event" that led to this scenario. Helpful to this end are the lead actors-- Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver -- who are striking in performances that carry the film. It's a painstakingly plotted course through divorce proceedings that demonstrate the ways in which people naturally grow apart that ultimately says, "It's okay to step away."
That's not to say things don't get ugly. The legal part of this divorce exacerbates their already emotional decision to separate. Enter Alan Alda and Laura Dern as disillusioned divorce lawyers who help the couple scrape for everything they deserve but don't really want anymore, and the things they want but perhaps don't deserve. Dern is especially delicious, turning magnificently in her few scenes; one in particular features her ranting about the cruelty of gender inequality in divorce proceedings. And while the case is utterly brilliant, I just didn't much like the movie.
It's shockingly funny, emotionally brutal, and intellectually stimulating. It's also fiercely annoying. As a matter of pure personal taste, I don't much care for "slice of life" movies that so desperately try to recreate realism on screen. I had the same problem with Terms of Endearment, among others. I don't want to see a movie about normal people doing normal -- if awful -- things. That's when it stops being art to me. Even some sitcoms and soap operas are more artful than this sort of doldrums. Further, I couldn't help but feel constantly irritated at these people. Literally all of their problems could have been solved if they just communicated better. They are so incapable of being honest and open and decent with each other, I started to feel that they deserve everything that happens to them, even more than Oedipus deserved his mess of a life. Tragic flaws are only tragic when the things you do to overcome or rectify them fail; the characters in Marriage Story aren't tragic, they're pathetic.
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