One of the most beautifully devastating films of our era; Noah Baumbach’s magnum opus, Marriage Story,  focuses in on Charlie and Nicole Barber as they divorce, based in large part by his own admission on his experience divorcing Jennifer Jason Leigh in 2013. Leigh has reportedly seen the film and liked it, which I think says more than any review ever could, because Baumbach doesn’t make Charlie an angel, nor does he make Nicole an unbelievable 'bitch'. Naturally there is a distance as the film isn’t wholly non-fictional, but the film is so poetically truthful in its pain and forces us as an audience to sit and grin and bear through a truly emotionally wrenching experience. Early in the film Adam Driver’s Charlie leaves the cinema with his son, who comments that the film made him cry “four times”. Whether by design or not, I had four separate occasions of balling the first time I saw the film and have been crying at every personal screening since. The film really is that emotionally devastating. However as with all Baumbach works, the film too is equally dramatic and hilarious.

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For as much as the film really is as touching and deeply affecting as it is made out to be, the film really is similarly one of the best comedies of its year, in the typical Baumbach fashion of effortlessly merging the real life foibles of drama with the very human comedy that often occurs no matter the context of any situation. Because it’s cheaper than therapy I’ll offer up the truth from my end that the first time I saw this film was on a glorious rainy day in Philadelphia, during a semester abroad, following a turbulent break-up from a three year relationship. As a stubborn artistic type with scarily similar similarities to Adam Driver’s character of Charlie Barber, in all the worst and best ways, and with me being the one being left, I naturally was knocked out by the film. Of course I didn’t cheat and in my relationship, it was actually her that... I feel like I’m going on a tangent. My point being that for a period of time I did wonder whether or not the film worked so tremendously well for me due to the unfortunate real life timing of it all. With two years past now and only minor flourishes of the love that I was once... I’ll stop myself again. The point is I do believe that with time and distance Marriage Story isn’t merely a film cosmically made exactly for me at exactly the right moment. The film is a deeply truthful feature that naturally touches anybody who has been in any sort of relationship, whether it ended or not. The deep pain of the film and the journey that its two leads characters of Charlie and Nicole (played brilliantly by Scarlett Johansson) go through, really is the sort of painful existence that so many face day after day. But to return to my first point in this paragraph, Baumbach never forgets that admist all this pain and hurt, comes the real truth of life, that sometimes there are plenty of jokes and laughs along the way – whether they be meant or not.

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The comedic elements of the film really do highlight where Baumbach’s biggest influences come from, in particular the screwball comedies of the 30s and 40s, in particular Twentieth Century and To Be or Not to Be. This is of course most evident in the extended slapstick sequences, such as that of the hilarious serving of papers, aswell as the later cringe-inducing, yet similarly hilarious knife trick sequence. However the influences go beyond these comedies. Of course as the film reaches its naturally melancholy climax of Charlie performing Being Alive from Stephen Sondheim’s musical Company, we find the greater context of where this film finds its tone and beautiful mood. There was a period of time where both Driver and Baumbach were flirting with the idea of adapting Company itself into a film, despite this idea going by the way side over the years, the terrific afterglow of that idea gives us the exact perfect ending this film needed. Perfectly imbuing the theatrical elements of Charlie and Nicole’s life, aswell as showing us the extent that Charlie has been altered by the events of the film, with him beginning his ‘performance’ as a sort of wry and winking impersonation of the original cast album, before eventually giving into the beauty, power and indeed sadness of the song and its message. Sondheim often wryly commented that he spent two and a half hours of run time with the marriage centric musical trying to say what Anton Chekhov managed to say in one sentence. That sentence was “if you are afraid of loneliness, do not marry”. Many detractors of the film like to point to this scene as a way of noting that the film is imbalanced towards siding with Charlie, when in actuality this is a clear mirroring of Nicole’s earlier extended monologue with Laura Dern’s character at her offices. If anything in actuality Nicole’s monologue gives us more of an insight into the character with her being able to clearly and mostly eloquently (despite the natural immense emotion) relay to Dern the story thus far of their relationship. Frequently throughout the film Baumbach plays with when the two are alone and when they come together, whether it be through montage or overlaying of images, as per the visual styling of Ingmar Bergman’s Persona.

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Although the film was nominated for multiple Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Screenplay, Best Actor and Best Actress. The film’s sole win brings us into the other excellent facet of the film, its glorious ensemble, with Laura Dern winning her first Oscar for the role here of Nora Fanshaw. A role partially based upon real-life attorney Laura Wasser, who represented Dern, Baumbach and Johansson respectively in each of their divorces. Adam Driver has never been divorced, but is indeed a child of divorced parents, highlighting even in the casting the widespread pain of this sort of loss of love. Beyond Dern in the world of lawyers, we too find both Ray Liotta and Alan Alda delivering wonderfully different performances as the two very polar opposite brands of lawyer one could come across in this sort of fight. However beyond the lawyers, one finds a collection of similar major talents doing great work, in particular of course Azhy Robertson as Henry Barber, the child caught in the middle of this horrible thing. Aswell as the terrifically funny Julie Haggerty and Merrit Wever as Nicole’s mother and sister. Hell, even Wallace Shawn shows up to steal the film for a few early scenes. The entire film blends its ensemble so brilliantly well, fading to black repeatedly to chapterise the film into segments relaying passages of time in-between these fades, all of this being brought out by the sensationally specific and rhythmic editing of Jennifer Lame, who has edited every Baumbach film since Frances Ha.

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The film’s final Oscar nomination was for the thing that I wish to conclude with, the beautiful, sentimental, sweeping and naturally effecting score by Randy Newman, whom previously worked with Baumbach on The Meyerwitz Stories. Whereas that score was a simple and elegant collection of piano pieces, here Newman’s work goes beyond character themes and overall tones, and manages to convey in a mere 24 minutes of recorded tracks, an entire life of love and loss. Newman’s work in the film further brings home the immense quality of the feature at hand. For me Marriage Story was my second favourite film of the year of 2019, and one of our finest films in many years. The beauty, the pain, the power, will resonate for me for many years to come and will always be a film that I return to in my life. Thank you Mr Baumbach, Oscars don’t matter, but you should know (not that you’ll read this) that your snub for Best Director was the biggest of the year.

-        -  Thomas Carruther