Marriage Story

Somebody, need me too much
Somebody, know me too well
Somebody, pull me up short
And put me through hell
And give me support
For being alive
Make me alive
Make me alive

(Stephen Sondheim, Company)


Two of Sondheim’s songs feature in Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story. Sondheim’s musical is a rumination on marriage: the pros and cons, the joys and tribulations. Baumbach’s is similar: despite featuring embittered characters contesting a bitter divorce, this isn’t a bitter movie.


The characters are Charlie (Adam Driver) and Nicole Barber (Scarlett Johansson). He is a theatre and company director; she, his leading lady. Neither came from New York; both have set up home there. 


In a tender opening, Charlie’s voice-over begins: ‘What I love about Nicole …’ What follows is a rhapsodic eulogy. Compliments include, ‘She’s always inexplicably brewing a cup of tea that she doesn’t drink’ and ‘She always says when she doesn’t know something or hasn’t read a book or seen a film or a play (whereas I fake it or say something like, ‘I haven’t seen it in a while.’). 


Nicole then returns to the paean, listing such things as, ‘Charlie eats like he’s trying to get it over with and like there won’t be enough food for everyone’ and ‘He loves being a dad, he loves all the things you’re supposed to hate, like the tantrums, the waking up in the night.’

However, the rug is pulled from under us when it’s revealed these words have been written for mediation. These love letters aren’t the effusive outpourings of sweethearts; they are a homework task set by a counsellor to remind each other what they once liked about the other. Unfortunately, Nicole can’t bring herself to say the words aloud. Rationally, she knows voicing them will begin the healing process, but her feelings are too raw for bridge building. Charlie feels able to do so. Maybe his role of director gives him the forensic detachment to be outside of himself and deliver the lines without being in them. The counsellor nods his approval. Nicole feels the patriarchy has aligned against her and walks out.


From here, Nicole takes their son Henry with her to Los Angeles. Her family are from there and her new work too. For the first time in years she is going it alone, starring in a television pilot. Charlie, a theatre man, can’t hide his contempt, commenting on how he can’t judge TV because he doesn’t watch it (the TV is on in the background). Theatre/television isn’t the only dichotomy here; LA and New York is another; old and new money too. Nicole’s parents were in the entertainment industry; Charlie's in the volatile drinking racket. For Charlie the theatre represents the collective, any money you make should be put back in; for Nicole acting is cut-throat, casting calls and rejection- you have to put yourself first. To pigeonhole Nicole as a selfish capitalist and Charlie a selfless socialist would be reductive though. When Nicole meets her lawyers, she confesses how she saw herself shrinking under Charlie’s ‘genius.’ As a younger woman, she gave up her first shot of stardom to work with him in NY theatre. Just as in work, she felt as though she ceded her life to him, having him direct their marriage. When she said about moving back to LA, she wasn’t listened to. Being the actress, she couldn’t give the notes, only take them.

Emotional tug of war.

The two want an amicable divorce. Less bitter wrangling, more conscious uncoupling. They are from the arts and have no desire to be cast in a legal drama. However when Nicole is advised to hire a lawyer (Laura Dern), Charlie responds by finding his own. Initially he baulks at enlisting Jay (Ray Liotta), finding him abrasive. Instead he favours Bert (Alan Alda) who understands the human cost of court room battles. Wise and worn, Bert offers the dictum, ‘Criminal lawyers see bad people behaving at their best, while divorce lawyers see good people behaving at their worst.’ Given how the film unfolds, the words are prophetic. 


What makes this a terrific film though is how even-handed it is. Baumbach has been through divorce himself, and could have directed this from a male perspective with Charlie getting a better deal than Nicole. This would have made the film a harder watch and a less nuanced one. By feeling for both, we don’t root for either. Divorce isn’t cut and dry. Sometimes there aren’t heroes and villains. The person who had the affair might have been mistreated. The person who walked out may have spent a lifetime behind domestic bars. Some couples are tested more than others. You don’t necessarily have the greatest marriage because you’ve never had a row, you might just be lucky and never had a death, a crisis, a dilemma to contend with. Baumbach gives these characters dignity, even when they're being undignified.


A special mention to the score by Randy Newman. Handling a 40-piece chamber orchestra requires a special talent. The opening minutes are a nod to Woody Allen’s Manhattan with voice-over, New York and romanticism all featuring. As Gershwin’s Rhapsody In Blue did for that, Newman does for this. With Sondheim numbers featuring, you have a film that features two of America’s greatest songwriters. 

Marriage Story is the story of many marriages. All of them begin in happiness, but many end in the reverse. It’s a seismic chapter too frequently ignored by filmmakers. They want love stories depicting happy-ever-afters. Unlike lawyers, Hollywood doesn't find divorce as lucrative. Baumbach has been brave in his subject matter. He has shown the brittle, brutal battle of divorce, but done it with a sense of beauty. The combatants are so often reluctant fighters, fighting out of lost love, as opposed to fiery hate. It’s a story worth telling; a story worth seeing.



Marriage Story is on Netflix.