Noah Baumbach's Marriage Story

Don't speak!

but for the screeching of Jennifer Tilly xp

Oh, Merritt Wever is in this? Extra sold!

Well, for about 6-7 minutes? Don't know her TV stuff, but very funny, as is the actress who plays the Evaluator.

N.B. joked that he reverse-engineered the whole movie so Adam could sing "Being Alive." Apparently they discuss Company often.

btw people marry and/or shack up to save money kthxbye

Only slightly mourning the Company movie that didn’t come to pass.

btw people marry and/or shack up to save money kthxbye

― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius),

Which explains why Ira Sachs' Love is Strange is one of the wisest of recent films.

https://youtu.be/FX32wicAYaI

Saw this today. I liked it a lot (his best since Squid for sure), but it was a much less "balanced" telling than the marketing suggested. It felt to me very much like Driver's movie and, outside of the opening 15 minutes or so, it's largely told from his character's POV - and when it does switch over to ScarJo's side it's for broader stuff like Dern's Mary rant. (Not a complaint, exactly, just an observation.) Supporting performances all great.

The "Being Alive" scene is indeed quite something. I'm now extra excited for the Carax/Sparks Driver/Cotillard musical.

I don't get Baumbach at all, but this was indeed really good. I don't think it's balanced, in that it's definitely Driver's story - ScarJo knows what she wants from the start, already has most of it, knows how to get the rest, Driver has a thing to go through - but it's balanced in that it's not just complaining about the ex.

Yeah, I just think the "his and hers" trailers/posters might lead people to expect otherwise. But that's not on the movie itself, really.

otm. I was a bit surprised as well, definitely.

I don't have a non shitty link handy but the NYT op ed unfavourably comparing this to Kramer vs Kramer depressed me, and not in the intended fashion

Now, Kramer vs Kramer, that's a film that good use a bit more balance.

Yeah the vilification of Streep in that is v harsh

saw a preview for this when I went to see the irishman, also a fair bit on it in the recent driver NYer profile, definitely plan to see it

Thought this was good, although--I experience this a lot nowadays--I was just watching it without really feeling anything until the very end (Driver reading Johansson's letter was the one time I found it genuinely moving). Didn't know what to make of their cathartic, Virginia Wolf-like meltdown argument. (Unmarried me to my married friend: "Is this the kind of stuff you people suppress?"). Performances were good, the lawyers especially--and Alda especially especially. I hope he gets lots of year-end recognition. If I empathized with anything, it was Driver's exasperation with being caught in a web of illogic--I've been experiencing a lot of that lately in a different context, trying to sort out moving-related stuff with various companies. (Like the company where I can't access my e-mail account to check a bill, so they send me an access code to the very e-mail account I can't access. It's maddening.) I don't think it's as good as Kramer, but it's good enough that I want to rewatch that for the first time in years to be sure. The kid reminded me of Danny from The Shining. Didn't find him all that compelling, certainly as compared to the kid in Kramer.

I said Virginia Wolf--I think I meant Vivica Fox.

Also: rather cool that the film, rare in America concerns /process/: the awful legal machinations and hefty price tags of modern divorce.

I don't have a non shitty link handy but the NYT op ed unfavourably comparing this to Kramer vs Kramer depressed me, and not in the intended fashion

― Simon H., Saturday, November 23, 2019 2:41 AM (six days ago) bookmarkflaglink

A 40-year-old movie proves more progressive about relationships than one from 2019.

This essay includes spoilers for “Marriage Story.”

In Noah Baumbach’s film “Marriage Story,” Nicole (Scarlett Johansson) explains to her divorce lawyer, Nora (Laura Dern), why she’s ending her marriage.

In the early stages of their relationship, Nicole abandoned an acting career in Hollywood to move to New York City with her husband, Charlie, an up-and-coming director, and star in his theater productions. She feels that the contributions from Charlie (Adam Driver) haven’t been equal. As his career ascended, she felt “smaller,” and he refused to support her desire to eventually move back to Los Angeles so she could be closer to her family and return to screen acting.

“It would be strange if he turned to me and said, ‘What do you want to do today?’” Nicole tells Nora.

“Marriage Story” depicts the couple’s dissolution as a bitter, emotional battle with yelling, tears and many monologues. Nicole moves back to Los Angeles with their 8-year-old son to shoot a TV pilot, and a bicoastal custody fight ensues. It’s less a film about one particular divorce and more a commentary on divorce itself. And in keeping with our era, a gender imbalance is the main topic of both conversation and controversy, and seems to be the main reason for Nicole and Charlie’s split.

“The idea of a good father was created, like, 30 years ago,” Nora declares as she preps Nicole for an interview with the case worker who will observe her and her son at home. Even so, Nora continues, society still sets impossibly high expectations for mothers while fathers get away with making mistakes and doing as little as possible. Perhaps unintentionally, “Marriage Story” reinforces that double standard: As a parent, Nicole is more present and attentive than Charlie, who is too wrapped up in his own grandiose artistic vision to consider the lives and perspectives of others — yet by the end of the film, Charlie hasn’t been forced to acknowledge his neglect as a husband or father.

Back in 1979, a good 10 years before Nora’s estimated emergence of the hands-on “good father” narrative, there was a film that critiqued culture’s archaic concept of the father as a stoic provider: Robert Benton’s divorce drama “Kramer vs. Kramer.” As Ted Kramer, Dustin Hoffman portrays a parent who learns from his mistakes and grows emotionally.

This new kind of father wasn’t created in a vacuum. Ted’s journey begins with his wife, Joanna (Meryl Streep), rejecting him and the gender divide within their marriage — she feels suffocated by her role as a wife and mother, and exhibits signs of extreme depression. As she stands in the hallway outside their apartment, she begs him not to stop her from leaving. “Don’t make me go in there,” she says. “If you do, I swear one day next week, maybe next year, I don’t know, I’ll go right out the window.”

Once Joanna is gone, Ted is forced to perform all the tasks he previously left to his wife. As he juggles child care and his career, he learns that parenting is, in fact, a full-time job.

One day, Ted is late to pick up his son, Billy, which leads to a tantrum. “All the other mothers were there before you,” Billy says while glaring at his father. Ted is softened by the outburst. He starts to take his parenting duties more seriously and finds himself bonding with another parent who was left by her spouse.

Chastened after yet another tantrum, Ted opens up to Billy about his shortcomings as a husband and father: “I think the reason Mommy left is because for a long time now I kept trying to make her be a certain kind of person, Billy, a certain kind of wife I thought she was supposed to be. And she just wasn’t like that.” Ted goes on to explain that he didn’t listen to her when she tried to talk about their problems because he was “too wrapped up” in thinking about himself.

Charlie exhibits no such self-reflection in “Marriage Story.” During one blistering argument, Nicole tries but fails to get him to acknowledge his neglect; it’s heartbreaking to watch her explain to Charlie how he steam-rolled her into staying in New York away from her family and the Hollywood career she desperately wanted to continue to pursue. It’s even sadder to watch as her mother and sister, who don’t understand why she’s leaving Charlie, encourage her to stay with him.

Nora is the only one in Nicole’s corner, pointing out her client’s contributions to Charlie’s work and her involvement as a parent. Nora acts as a cheerleader, reminding Nicole of her worth whenever she expresses doubt over Nora’s cutthroat methods. As Nora, Ms. Dern seems to delight in the opportunity to highlight the hypocrisy of men and their continued adherence to a sexist, classically heteronormative worldview.

But the director, Mr. Baumbach, casts Nora’s point of view in a harsh light, with her feminist speeches framed like villain monologues. In the last act of the film, Nora announces that she cut a deal with Charlie’s lawyers that gives Nicole custody 55 percent of the time whenever Charlie is visiting Los Angeles. “I didn’t want him to be able to say he got 50-50,” she says, gloating.

Even though “Marriage Story” is ostensibly on Nicole’s side, she isn’t given the same sympathy-churning emotional beats afforded to her ex-husband. Charlie never apologizes for his behavior, though he does perform “Being Alive,” from the Stephen Sondheim musical “Company.” In the show, the song finds the lead character at first rejecting commitment, but soon realizing that everything that makes a relationship challenging can also be fulfilling. Mr. Driver’s performance of the song is stirring, but its context feels unearned.

This isn’t surprising, considering Mr. Baumbach also made “The Squid and the Whale,” which also has a hard time humanizing its ex-wife character (played by Laura Linney). And if we look elsewhere in cinematic history, we can find many examples of women leaving their husbands and being depicted as cold for doing so: Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Rain People”; Woody Allen’s “Manhattan”; Danny DeVito’s dark comedy “The War of the Roses,” in which the wife’s desperate desire for independence is exhibited as a homicidal hatred for her controlling husband.

It can be disheartening to watch these tropes play out over and over again without filmmakers seriously reflecting on the men’s treatment of their spouses. That’s part of what makes “Kramer vs. Kramer” endure all these years later — it imagines a male character who learns to grow and recognizes the part he played in the dissolution of his marriage. Notably, Meryl Streep said she pushed for more nuance and sympathy for her character in the script, while dealing with on-set harassment from Mr. Hoffman, who unexpectedly slapped her before a scene.

That film’s troubling back story hews closely to the struggle of Nicole in “Marriage Story”: a woman fighting for autonomy under the watchful eye of a celebrated male artist in an industry that celebrates his volatility. In 2019, Mr. Baumbach’s meditationserves as a reminder of how little has changed for women, on and off screen.

Jourdain Searles (@jourdayen) is a writer and performer.

i kinda hate Baumbach's mannered fatuous style but i suppose i'll give this a try based on the strength of the casting.

I don't like Baumbach's film as a whole very much, but at least he seems to hate the father figure. The Squid and the Whale seemed a full on attack on the husband, and The Meyerowitz Stories kinda followed it up years later. I don't really get the argument, except that it's true his male characters often are too narcissistic to grow and reflect on what they've done.

Didn't know what to make of their cathartic, Virginia Woolf-like meltdown argument. (Unmarried me to my married friend: "Is this the kind of stuff you people suppress?")

Maybe it's different in Canada, but a sizable minority of the 'happily married' couples I've known have fought like dogs in front of me. Part of the charm of mating.

Lol that NYT piece is bullshit re: Kramer vs. Kramer - it’s more progressive because it makes Meryl Streep out to be the selfish, self-absorbed and absent parent? Wtf

(xpost) Obviously I've witnessed lots of marital sniping, among friends and, growing up, from my parents. I remember a friend and his wife visiting once where the back-and-forth was particularly unrelenting up-down/black-white one-upmanship. But Driver really takes it to another level towards the end of their big argument here. (They're alone, mind you, not arguing in front of other people.)

well it's more fraught than most of the other circumstances we're discussing

I added this to my queue but after watching the trailer it seems like it's going to be really stressful and annoying to watch. And I hate to be shallow but I am hoping there is a reason for Scarlett's terrible hair in the movie. I do love Merritt Wever though.

what reason would satisfy you

Awful

colin jost's mom gave her a welcome to Staten Island haircut before filming? xpost

moralism is kinda silly to use on Baumbach and not, say, Bergman, who wasn't unimpeachably noble toward his women in his life

i'm less concerned by the moralism and more by the navel-gazing and woe-is-me rich white guy meanderings. great actors help but you better have a REALLY good script and i don't think baumbach generally does much better than okay.

this was better than OK. It's true he tends to make films about well-off artists, that's whatcha get.

then again i thought Meyerowitz had a sterling Sandler performance.

(and a family w/ members at differing levels of financial/professional security)

Well-off artists are his bread and butter. It would be weird to see him make a movie about people who are genuinely struggling to get by and I doubt it'd be any good. (The solution of course is to let more working-class ppl make movies that get distributed, but good luck with that.)

my issue is the writing as well- the movie is so jejune and MOR in its content & conclusions, coming from a guy whose personal life is way more fucked up and interesting. I just think it's a cowardly film, especially seeing it a week after Shia LaBeouf's Honey Boy, which isn't entirely successful, but it's much more interesting and unique and affecting, and really fucking brave.

I haven't seen Honey Boy yet but I don't really buy the autobiographical readings this movie is getting

i don't require him to alter his subject (and definitely not to "people struggling to get by") to take him seriously; I'm just saying I have no interest in pursuing Baumbach's stated metier so i need him to really wow me to keep my attention which he most certainly has not up until now.
Except here he is with a massive culture-crossing statement so i feel i gotta try. the fault is likely mine.

I mean it's totally fair and fine to be sick of that subject matter area!

yes it is

just as i am sick of QT's veneration of cultural sputum

Honey Boy is like spending 89 minutes in a room with Stephen Miller playing with spray dye.

ouch

this is the most i've ever liked a baumbach film. everything really works

looking forward to seeing it

I could've used more ScarJo and less of the Driver breakdown scene in which she comforts him, especially since it's more likely that she would've moved toward him, stopped, changed her mind, and walked away.

refereed a lotta knockdown dragouts?

I can't self-referee.

I was confused by your ref to "Driver breakdown scene" until I figured out you meant the big fight scene. It's a dual breakdown if anything, surely?

I think it's fine that the film is more from his POV. Men relate to and understand men more than they do women. That's why women filmmakers are better at representing women.

definitely a dual breakdown that's also a complete breakdown in language and a catharsis, and so i think it's appropriate they embrace

film is to the correct degree aware of itself as a film imo

i also think scarjo's initial scene with dern is so powerful that i didn't really notice we were with driver more

Alan Alda microwaving his lunch while strategizing with Driver = small comedy classic.

I know Liotta's not looking fit lately, but, boy, are the ruddy face, choice of ties, and bludgeoning voice perfect for this kind of showboating fraud (who happens to be very good at his job).

Sometimes it’s nice to be indulgent in movies

i don't disagree

this was excellent. that fight! Adam Driver's singing scene!

I liked this too! (although the Driver drywall scene should've gone in a different direction, agreed.)

xpost I also thought the lighting and color was weird. It looked like it was shot in a Gap dressing room.

the discourse around this movie is fuckin excruciating

No part of the discourse has prepared me for everyone binge watching a Noah Baumbach movie IMMEDIATELY and then making memes about it like it’s the Avengers disintegration scene or something

where are you seeing the memes

Twitter

It maybe drives home the sad point that people on/around media and/or weird twitter are often too lazy or don’t make enough money to look at anything that isn’t on Netflix

I think we've identified the source of your problem

is there a meme around the scene where Wallace Shawn seems to say he got a beej from Streep?

Yes!

(not really)

wallace shawn was my favorite character in this

I watch almost everything on netflix because it's the only service I have. I guess I would have to pick "lazy".

The serving scene was my favorite too. There was such an ease with all the actors.

xps I thought he said 4 time Oscar winner in that scene (though I’d have to go back and check) - which would mean it was K Hepburn, not Streep.

even stranger

Wouldn't put this on a year end list or anything but I liked it fine. Worst thing I can say about it is I thought Scarlett Johansson had some super clunky acting moments, and just generally seemed really not up to a lot of the demands of this kind of really talky material. Particularly stood out for me in her monologue in Laura Dern's office, which played like an awkward rehearsal, she seemed really at sea. Maybe the years she's spent doing superhero stuff have left her rusty w/r/t the demands of this kind of material.

Thought the big fight scene was definitely affected in that predictable Method-y way but it still worked for me within the film. Wouldn't have been as kind to Driver's song - great song, great singing, but no idea why the movie had to come to a full stop for him to sing it, especially after we'd already crossed the 2-hour mark.

Also I am ready for movies to find a different way of signaling that characters are smart & talented in a creative field than having them get a macarthur grant.

we have different definitions of "a full stop"

Wondering what made you feel that way about the Laura Dern office monologue scene.

Monologues definitely happen when unhappy people finally have someone who is listening to them. Nothing felt false or out of place there to me. It might have sounded like an awkward rehearsal because it was -- Nicole's been writing these lines and this is her first table read.

the character herself is at sea. scarjo turned in a credible performance throughout imo, i didn’t once think “wow scarjo is trying really hard,” i just kept thinking about nicole

The scene itself as-written made sense and was fine imo, I just feel like Johansson didn’t stick the landing. It’s written as a really stagy technically demanding huge chunk of dialogue, and requires her to naturalistically do a lot of these deceptively hard actor-tricks, having stuff pop into her head, getting caught off guard by emotions that are appearing unexpectedly, having it look real while also making sure she’s getting across what is basically exposition, while also getting through this huge mouthful of articulate dialogue. I think she’s really good and but i just didn’t think she was 100% up to it, I could see her grinding her gears & felt like I was just kind of watching an actress really energetically recite a whole bunch of lines. Ymmv though

I don't think it's a 100% "maturalistic" film.

yeah i feel that. like i said, didn't ruin the movie or anything but couldn't help but notice it. Driver's chops as a stage actor really stood out in comparison imo.

Now that I'm thinking about it, realizing that's her biggest scene without Driver - they def elevate each other in their scenes together.

The film “A Marriage Story” (2019) should instead have been named “A Divorce Story” pic.twitter.com/5mKGgCzb08

— Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) February 24, 2020

celebrity astronomers are very prosaic folx

there's something wrong with this man

loool

Very interesting opinion on this movie about relationships from a guy with multiple sexual misconduct allegations

A Divorce Story? More like A Divorce Movie!

and he got the movie title wrong!

The film “The Jaws” (1975) should instead have been named “The Shark That Kills People”

Ray Liotta kills in this! Perfect