Movie Details
Movie: Marriage Story (2019)
Director: Noah Baumbach
Cast: Adam Driver, Scarlett Johansson, and Julia Greer
Movie Genres: Comedy/Romance
Release date: 6 December 2019
IMDB Rating: 7.9/10
Languages: Spanish and English
Duration: 2h 17m
Trailer
Synopsis
Some of my colleagues refer to this movie as a reverse romantic comedy. Others like the Bittersweet dramedy genre, which few people know how to do. Some liken Marriage Story to a thriller where you watch helplessly as the minutes tick by as the central couple of likable people unknowingly walk towards the meat grinder. No one is wrong and everyone is right. Isn’t it beautiful that Noah Baumbach managed to create a film where you forget that the screen separates you from the actors and start projecting your scale of values into their fate? You start rooting for them and experiencing every twist of her history with them.
It doesn’t matter that I’m writing this review when I put my son to sleep and my wife and soul mate are hard at work next to me. This Netflix hit is not about people getting to know each other in it, or perhaps taking stock of their own in the face of a crumbling relationship. I’m not Adam Driver and my wife is not Scarlett Johansson, but thanks to these two actors, who have breathed life into many memorable and complex characters in their indie decades, you can experience the pain of a relationship, the awkwardness ever after that didn’t work out.
Marriage Story doesn’t want you to recognize yourself in it even for a minute. In the first five minutes, however, you will accept her characters as your own and hope that this game of chess will end in a stalemate, after which all the pieces will return to their starting position as happily as possible. And at the same time, you are not naive and you know that it usually does not end like this. Statistically, we have already moved over fifty percent. Yes, more than half of officially signed relationships do not last until the fairy-tale-sounding “happily ever after”.
Baumbach’s film will explain to you in a few precise strokes that in similar cases it is not always easy to determine the hero and the villain. Often the pieces on the chessboard are not black and white. They are the same color and we have no idea why they are actually at war with each other. The director does not try to look cheaply at the problem of divorce, for example, through the lens of the nine-year-old son of both heroes. On the contrary, it fully utilizes the potential of a brooding Driver and a stripped-down Johansson to show the dark corners of the divorce proceedings on the screen of the crumbling relationship between a New York theater director and a California movie star who is catching a second wind.
He speaks, writes, and directs from his soul, because he went through a painful divorce from Jennifer Jason Leigh, and some moments in the film copy his own life. Likewise, Baumbach, the director of many intellectual indie films, unexpectedly wrote the screenplay for the animated Madagascar 3 during his divorce from the aforementioned actress.
The lawyers in the film were flawlessly portrayed by Laura Dern, Ray Liotta, and Alan Alda also contributed a small cameo. Any interaction between any two or more actors is both comfort and soul-destroying. Film buffs rejoice at how Baumbach managed to cut down the pure cinematic essence to mere play with words and emotions. A film star and a theater director are getting divorced before us, but the form and content of Marriage Story are, on the contrary, a marriage of the best of film and theater. Any forward-thinking actor would fight in advance for even the smallest role in this film because whether you are on screen for five or fifty minutes, you have a chance to captivate the audience.
I would recommend Marriage Story not only to every actor but also to every viewer. It will remind the happily married ones what to value. To those hesitating over the abyss, he may show pains of heart and soul of which they had no idea. And for singles who are just in love, he outlines an obstacle course that has no parallels. And yet, in the end, Baumbach can turn the knife in the wound in such a way that it is difficult to distinguish the tears of joy from the drops of grief. Marital history is not a warning finger or a schoolboy lecture. It drives more people into a relationship and convinces even more to stay in it. Not by brute force, but by adjusting the mirror.
Adam and Scarlett are not just movie characters. They are your acquaintances, for whom you have always wished a happy marriage, you don’t understand why they are getting divorced and especially who on earth is advising them to throw sticks under each other’s feet. The much-quoted altercation, which has been turning the internet into unrelated memes for weeks now, is Oscar material mainly because everyone, but everyone, can remember a similar confrontation where he got out something he later regretted. And Baumbach time and again manages to sell this moment epically, but at the same time so casually that for a moment you feel like you’re watching yourself. You will be startled, and embarrassed, and then it will dawn on you. Is this what a movie can do?
He’s always been able to do that, but under the annual coating of Hollywood manufactory, donkey bridges, pop culture acronyms, and quick-cooker conversations peppered with wishy-washy tidbits or forced references, it’s relatively easy to forget what that humble return to roots looks like. Marital history is not an introspective game of great art or intellectual masturbation. It’s a fantastically hit author’s hole-in-one, and I’m so glad it came out on Netflix. It will be seen by many more people than would wander into regular cinemas – possibly Oscars and Neo-Oscars. And that’s a good thing, because the Netflix and Chill crowd is the ideal target, even though the word chill, in this case, takes on a more primitive meaning.
Remember the movie Be Kind, Rewind? Such a forgotten and slightly geeky comedy and reference to the video rental era. It has absolutely nothing to do with Marriage History. The title alone inspired me to the main message that I took away. Just toss it around. When you finish watching the movie – rewind, be kind. Rewind it to the beginning and be nice. To yourself and your loved ones. Not because it’s a holiday. Not because you’ve just seen what happens when you let a few misunderstandings and disagreements go out and then deal with them by proxy, but simply because we often show less natural respect and humility to those with whom we spend the most time (including ourselves). than false idols and stars. And with this already really difficult metaphor, I say goodbye and tell my wife that my humility and respect for Scarlett Johansson is incomparable to the one I feel for her.
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