Movies about divorce between parents have been around for ages, with the same old cliches and tropes that come with the territory used over and over again. And yet, the most acclaimed movie of the festival season is just that.
Noah Baumbach’s “Marriage Story” has a New York couple going through separation with their young son in the middle of the custody battle. Comparisons to Robert Benton’s “Kramer vs Kramer” are inevitable, even if Baumbach’s film, a tender, touching and heartfelt statement, does try to break out from the mold created by Pollack’s masterpiece.
Nicole (Scarlett Johansson) and Charlie (Adam Driver) are a married couple who want an amicable split, even going to divorce counseling, but things don’t go as planned. He wants to stay in New York, where they have lived the last 10 years, working on his successful avant-garde play (he’s the playwright, she’s his actress). However, Nicole just got the lead in a TV series in L.A. and wants to bring their son with her. It helps that it’s also where she grew up and where her family still resides. He wants none of that.
She ends up hiring aggressive hotshot attorney Nora (the always great Laura Dern), and he replies by hiring her rival male equivalent (Ray Liotta in his best performance in years). Blood is drawn. Legal fights ensue. I mean, it’s divorce. Sure, we’ve seen this before, but Baumbach infuses his movie with a style that is uniquely his own that it results in a fresh, incisive and worthy film.
Baumbach tries to never lose touch with why his couple built a life together and fell in love in the first place. The personal feel of the film is so well-detailed, maybe, because Baumbach went through his own divorce with L.A. actress Jennifer Jason Leigh back in 2013, eventually settling down with born-and-bred New York partner and muse, Greta Gerwig. But the movie is much more than that. Baumbach’s keen eye for the way people talk and act has always been there, from “The Squid and he Whale” to “Frances Ha”. No surprise then that his wise script is filled with his own unique brand of cinematic DNA, which has always been heavily-inspired by Woody Allen’s incisive New York dramedies.
The intimate 35mm camerawork courtesy of Robbie Ryan (who also shot Baumbach's “The Meyerowitz Stories”) is aided by a vast array of incredible performances throughout. It’s not just Driver and Johansson, but also Laura Dern, Alan Alda, and Ray Liotta who are all excellent in this.
Of course, time will tell if “Marriage Story” will reach the same heights as ‘Kramer.’ I don’t believe it will, but Baumbach’s movie is very much worthy of a watch. He lets his characters and scenes breathe throughout the 135 minute runtime, a length needed to create as many dimensions and depth for us to care about Nicole and Charlie’s plight. The back-and-forth he-said/she-said is a fascinating aspect of this film and will no doubt lead to a conversation about which side Baumbach is actually on.
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