Alternative monitoring of popular culture ~ broadly defined ~ in the pursuit of deeper understanding
Thursday, December 12, 2019
Marriage Story
Writer/director Noah Baumbach's Marriage Story puts the auteur's
signature wit and insight to work in a tale of the most personal and
excruciating of human trials -- the dissolution of a marriage. Scarlett
Johansson and Adam Drive are New York off-Broadway theater couple Nicole
and Charlie, parents of young Henry (Azhy Robertson), and parties in a
marriage that is threatened, we come to discover, by presumption and
resentment. When we meet them they are seeking counsel, not altogether
successfully, to resolve issues driving them apart. Then Nicole, who
has been genius director Charlie's muse and leading lady, accepts a role
in a television pilot and moves to L.A. with Henry. Charlie is
unperturbed, thinking the change is temporary and he'll visit
frequently. In the meantime, Nicole, who has discovered Charlie's
infidelity with a company member, hires a top-dollar eviscerator (the
wonderful Laura Dern) to represent her in a divorce. This action leads
to an escalation of tension and spiraling bitterness that culminates in a
scene of blistering vitriol the likes of which I've not seen since Liz
and Dick tore at each other's throats in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf
(1966). It's a sad, depressing clash of two decent but damaged people
trying to perfect the imperfectible. (And alone is worthy of the
accolades the film is receiving.) Baumbach is a masterful wordsmith but
in two particularly nice set pieces near the end he juxtaposes musical
numbers from Stephen Sondheim's Company that Nicole and Charlie perform
to different audiences. These are nice moments -- one frothy and the
other wistful -- that had they been given to lesser actors would have
fallen flat or been soupy. Instead, they capture two people who are
slowly finding their ways out of misery..
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