Marriage Story

Grade: B+

Ending a marriage with a young child in the mix, I hear, can be messy and difficult – even if you are Black Widow and Kylo Ren. Writer/director Noah Baumbach’s film Marriage Story gets added to the list of cinema that explores that territory. We’ve been down this road before, with Kramer vs. Kramer, The Story of Us, Blue Valentine, and even the director has dipped his toe into this pool in the past, with his The Squid and the Whale. However, Marriage Story is unique enough that it successfully secures its place on the top shelf with the best of ’em.

Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson star as the couple, in the process of splitting up. To add to the KvK comparison, does Driver remind anyone else of a young Dustin Hoffman, especially here? Driver’s character is a theatre artistic director in NYC. Johansson’s claim to fame was having a part in an American Pie/She’s All That-type teen sex comedy, but thanks to the opportunities her husband’s theatre company gave her, becomes an established actress who gets cast in a pilot in LA. She and their son have uprooted themselves across the country to California, while Driver bounces back-and-forth between his directing gigs back home and seeing the kid, and dealing with the divorce stuff.

I saw a movie fairly recently called The Angriest Man in Brooklyn – released in 2014, starring Robin Williams, in one of his last roles. I vehemently disliked it, but watched it twice within a year, because I was fascinated at how it so consistently managed to misstep. The dialogue was over-the-top, melodramatic, unnatural, sitcommy, unbelievable, and seemed to all but beg for a cheap laugh, like the worst plays put on in the community theatre I got my start in. Any potential sweet sincere moment the movie was trying to set up got completely undercut by another lame diversion into nonsense. Marriage Story has the same kind of kooky screenplay The Angriest Man in Brooklyn had, but prevails relatively unscathed, because the goofiness of the script doesn’t get in the way of the material. When it’s time to get serious, come up for air, and become emotionally available, it does.

And there are some shameless and ridiculous moments. Driver’s theatre company is apparently quite the prestigious professional one, seeing as how a play they have just done has been picked up by Broadway (with the same cast), and yet, it’s always the same people in these plays, and they act like leftovers from the amateur theatre troupe in Waiting for Guffman. The ever-inconceivable Wallace Shawn has a fun minor role as an old vet who loves to name-drop and prattle on about things like “the first Tony I won, at age 27. Did I ever tell you about that?” When Driver accidentally slices his forearm, things turn into a farce with him stumbling everywhere, forgetting which way his cabinet doors open, and frantically trying to open band-aids with his mouth while he’s holding his arm under the faucet of the kitchen sink which is on full blast. Doesn’t seem necessary. But I admit to belly-laughing (and hitting the rewind button) when a background character sneezes in the middle of a scene.

There are also authentic moments that are grounded in reality. Towards the end, Driver sings a classic showtune – and makes those lyrics sink in more than they ever have for me. The supporting cast boasts long-time reliable favorites like Ray Liotta, Alan Alda, Julie Hagerty, and Oscar-nominee Laura Dern, who absolutely relishes her role here. Johannson and Driver are fearless and unafraid to be vulnerable. Like Randy Newman’s score which sounds curiously like A Whiter Shade of Pale, Marriage Story has managed to create fresh music out of some of the same notes.

Grade: B+