The Bitter End

Enough of the "precursor awards" to the Oscars have now been handed out that the rough shape of what's likely to win at this year's ceremony has taken form. Although there are nine films competing for Best Picture, many of them can already be dismissed as having no real chance at the prize. And I just watched one of those, the divorce drama Marriage Story.

Nicole and Charlie are at the end of their marriage. They've been a team, Charlie the director of a New York theater company, Nicole the star actress. They've raised a son together. But they've realized it just isn't working. What begins as an amicable parting of ways slowly devolves as family and lawyers get involved. Soon, long gestating resentment is brought to the surface.

Marriage Story is written and directed by Noah Baumbach, but to me, it's neither the writing nor the directing of the movie that makes it shine. It does feel like a particularly realistic story, but there have been so many movies made about divorce that it could hardly be the first one. It's not the nature of these characters that makes the tale especially memorable; the fact that the couple are both in theater is very much periphery to the narrative.

It's not even that Marriage Story is particularly well balanced between the two sides of this separation. I think Baumbach might have intended it that way, but I do believe the story ends up tilting in favor of Charlie. It's the nature of the couple's grievances that Nicole's are very much rooted in the past, while Charlie's develop in the present. So while each has cause to want to leave the other, we see more of Charlie's side depicted on screen, in the here and now. The film eschews flashbacks, so we're left more to what Nicole tells us about her side of the story.

But if all of that sounds like I'm a bit down on this movie, I'm really not. It's a realistic portrait of a marriage in decay: one spouse coasting along oblivious, the other nursing a growing bitterness. The fact that the movie perhaps doesn't present it in a "50-50" kind of way doesn't take away from that core truth. Indeed, this will be painfully familiar for many people -- those who have been through that particular kind of divorce, or watched friends or family go through one. Yet the movie isn't two hours of pain, either. It's actually quite funny, with spikes of humor throughout.

That's thanks to a great cast. And it's in this that the movie achieves excellence. Scarlett Johansson earns her Oscar nomination as Nicole. I noted that her character's issues with the marriage are rooted more in the past; this means Johansson really has to make you sympathize through monologues more than action. (One in particular quite stands out.) Adam Driver is solid as Charlie, defending a practiced obliviousness to reality even as it slowly crumbles around him.

Most delicious of all are the three actors who play various lawyers the couple deals with over the course of their divorce. Ray Liotta is a calculating slimeball who oozes over every scene he's in. Alan Alda is a kindly old man, right as a friend, but wrong for the job. And Laura Dern is a force of nature ready to stick it to anyone and anything. (She's totally going to win Best Supporting Actress, by the way.) There are also great accents provided by Julie Hagerty and Merritt Wever as Nicole's mother and sister, and Wallace Shawn as an actor in Charlie and Nicole's theater company.

Marriage Story is not a flashy movie, nor even an uncommonly clever one. But what it does, it does very well, with one of the strongest casts of the year. I give it an A-, and the #5 slot (for now) on my Top 10 Movies of 2019 list.