Marriage Story
Ratings: 4.4/5
Director: Noah Baumbach
Producer(s): David Heyman, Noah Baumbach
Genre: Drama
Release Date: 15th November, 2019
Streaming Platform: Netflix
Star Cast: Scarlett Johansson, Adam Driver, Laura Dern, Alan Alda, Ray Liotta, Julie Hagerty, Merritt Wever, Azhy Robertson.
Plot:
The film follows a married couple, an actress and a stage director (Johansson and Driver), going through a coast-to-coast divorce.
Nicole (Johansson) and Charlie (Driver) Barber have already agreed to a divorce when the story begins. Nicole, an actress who was a vital part of the plays that Charlie, the director, made with their theater company, now wants to pursue a career out in Los Angeles, but Charlie wants to stay in New York City. Although they initially agree to no lawyers, Nicole decides she needs an advocate for her interests and hires the brutal Nora (Dern). Charlie, not wanting to lose total custody of their son Henry (Azhy Robertson), then hires his own representation (Alda).
Review:
Marriage Story is Academy Award nominated filmmaker Noah Baumbach's incisive and compassionate look at a marriage breaking up and a family staying together.
The story and the performances are in-sync with each other the whole time. You will grow to be emotionally invested with the two protagonists who are the core of this story. Marriage Story doesn’t preach you long comprehensions about how marriages and divorces should run. What it shows is that divorce is where love and hate clash with each other and ending a marriage isn’t like simply changing a channel. As divorce proceedings continue, we see the resentments and long over-due unpleasant opinions built over the course of the marriage gushing out.
Scarlett Johansson like never seen before purely indulges in the character of a woman who worries about what she is doing and how it affects Charlie and Henry to living life the way she wants to, every emotion can be seen sketched on her face. Adam Driver too is excellent as someone who has his own suppressed resentments and who is trying to balance his career and ensure that his son does not slip away from him.
The enthralling soundtrack by Randy Newman (also nominated for a Golden Globe) works in perfect harmony with the story.
Baumbach displays throughout the film- the vanities and uncertainties and the missteps that evoke the sense of full and complex lives. Yet the situational caricature is very fragile. In Baumbach’s vision, when that fine fabric of daily life is destroyed by emotional turmoil when all the inconveniences, absurdities, distortions, and pressures begin to unfold one by one.
